day 196 of being facebook free

Passed the sixth month mark recently. Wow, those 93 days just went by fast.

I don’t feel the sudden, subconscious impulse anymore to type “facebook.com” into the url box. I’m doing my best not to think about the ever-so-popular social network, but now, it’s near to impossible to avoid. Websites are beginning to offer users to access their accounts via their FB accounts. Like Flickr and Tapastic. (ugh) And of course, the logos that appear in the corner of the advertisement. Those little cute squares to show how hip and connected the business is to the mingling and the socializing.

Somewhere there’s some theory that if you are able to maintain a habit up thirty days, you can wire yourself to a new habit. Maybe in some cases, like having used Facebook for few years, and how such instant gratification (the dopamine release you feel as you see the notification bar light up), it might require more than just a month’s time to adapt.

Please, if you’re an user who is thinking about using this option or a website developer who is wondering whether to allow people to log in with their Facebook account, just don’t. It feels like the equivalent of an old timer trying to catch up with the times by publishing a video of himself twerking and saying, “rockin’ it like a whippersnapper.” How that description is relevant to this discussion is irrelevant. I hope the image is disturbing enough to deter you from doing so.