10 Types Of People Who Try To Quit Facebook... And Fail

You know you've considered quitting Facebook in the past, except you couldn't manage to stay off the site. Three years ago, when I really started to investigate the social networking phenomenon, only a handful of my friends were using Facebook. Years later, after a successful appeal to users' emotions and hopes for online social interactions, the tool has grown indispensable. Today I look at just what is indispensable about Facebook and highlight the types of people who keep getting drawn back in every time they try to quit. The Games Maven You spend too much time playing Facebook Games You're a Farmville maven, a Mafia Wars consiglieri and a Kung Fu Master. You're playing games more than three times a day and feel that nothing will result from you passing along one more little cow to your friends: in fact it will be a problem if you do pass it on, because your friends have asked you to to stop sending them Farmville invites. You quit the game. You wait, and a few days later you realize it's just a game, and that with a little moderation it can't be harmful. You can't quit! The Paranoid Android You're skeptical of the privacy setttings on Facebook and don't want everyone to know everything about your life. Your ex-girlfriend just found out you just moved back in with your parents, or haven't been able to find a new partner. You regularly get photo comments on five year old photos of you. It's creepy and a bit odd, and you're not sure what image you're portraying to your network. You quit Facebook and try to get off the grid. In a few weeks, you realize you have no way of letting anyone know that you just met a great girl and bought a new apartment! You do your research on Facebook privacy settings, sign back up, and set them to protect your identity. You can't quit! The Romantic You only signed up to get in touch with one special person. Now that's complete, so you're quitting. The problem is, within ten seconds of adding that one special person on Facebook, the friend suggester got you in touch with 20 old friends, and your post on their wall triggered another 20 friends. You're in nostalgic euphoria and just couldn't possibly see why you'd quit when it feels so good. You can't quit! The Regretful Socializer You feel that you're overdeveloping your loose acquaintance relationships and not spending enough time with your real friends. You've left 10 comments on people's walls today, and in retrospection you haven't seen eight of those people in over five years. You're spending time analyzing and thinking about people you barely know, while you skipped your real friends' party because you had to stay in and study. The problem is, you're wasting a ton of studying time posting on people's walls. If you didn't have Facebook, you could save time, study, and head to your real friends' party. It's a win win win. You quit Facebook. Two weeks later you run into your friends who wonder where you were at the 'big concert'. You are clueless, and they reply "we invited you on Facebook!" You sign up the next day and learn to use the friends lists feature properly. You can't quit! The Entrepreneur You're starting a business, and you are spending too much time on Facebook and not enough time on LinkedIn You figure that if you really want to get into the right network, you should push your professional social networking persona on LinkedIn. You delete your Facebook and start using LinkedIn. You update your status, post the books you read, look in the forums for business opportunities and join LinkedIn professional groups. You get some great contacts and move forward. Time passes, and you learn that key lesson that every entrepreneur eventually learns: balance. You realize LinkedIn has nary a single stray comment or funny link. It's all business, and as you realize that true success comes from having a personal life as well, you sign back into Facebook and reach out to old friends. You can't quit! The Spammed Gamer You just can't handle all the random application invitations, notifications, group invites and other types of spam. The tool has become unusable for you. Ever since you tried leveling up in Pet Society years ago, you added about 400 people who you've never met. Your wall and home page are constantly bombarded by invitiations to play Chinese cuddly bear farm games and assertions that someone has just voted you smarter than someone you don't even know. Your photos page has 3 photos of you and 200 collages of animated funny faces where you're constantly tagged as "the mysterious one", probably because you haven't met anyone that has tagged you. You've had enough and delete Facebook. You fall off the grid and find yourself relieved for a week, but desperately out of the loop. There's no 'action' in the sterile, unsocial web. You remember the good in Facebook. Events always worked well for you, and your message inbox wasn't too cluttered. You decide to join back up and restrict yourself to those two services of Facebook. You can't quit! The Explorer You want to try out a new social network, like Orkut or Bebo. You're tired of Facebook and want to branch out a bit, maybe make a new network on another site. The problem is, social networks are fundamentally tied to your real life counterparts. There isn't as much random friendship as could be expected. Just because we all use the same systems and are accessible to each other doesn't mean we really have anything in common. You probably have better luck with the dating sites, and try those. You realize that while the other networks can serve special functions, none of them will be central to your communication like Facebook. You can't quit! The Kid You're too young to use Facebook and your parents caught you. You're 12 and every one of your friends uses Facebook. You're all using it against the terms of service, but literally zero of your friends are not on the network, and it doesn't look like Facebook has any idea. Oprah just did a special on youth privacy and your mom caught you on Facebook super poking a Brazilian underwear model. You're going to have to quit Facebook and wait until you're 13, just like any good youngster would do. I don't really have to say it, but you'll probably end up using it from your school computers and at friends' houses, and will have to limit your references to "mafias", "pokes" and "farms" while at home. You can't quit! The Traitor You work for MySpace and Fox doesn't like traitors. You work for MySpace and realize that you're getting the evil eye when people realize you use Facebook. You have to quit and build your network on MySpace. Within minutes of starting up your MySpace account you're added by sexigirl1234, PharUpMyAce29 and RandomBand23432. You establish relationships of questionable meaningfulness, and most of the posts on your wall are "hi thx 4 the add nice pic". You resign yourself to sneaking into Facebook during bathroom breaks and using it at home. You can't quit! The Trapped Adventurer You are moving to a new life and want to break away from your old habits and friends. You are moving to a small town in Brazil in three months and want to make a new start. Your old friends have moved on to new things, and you want to try something new! You delete your account and hit the road, and have an amazing time forging new relationships. Within days of arriving, you realize that people want to add you on Facebook, even in Brazil! You realize that you can't quit Facebook... You just have to start a new account. Quitting Facebook image via Spot.php

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10 Types Of People Who Try To Quit Facebook... And Fail

Neil Vidyarthi

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Neil Vidyarthi