Heh, I took 4 months off of metafilter because it was taking up too much of my time, and ironically I wanted to find other sites to spend time on. I left this comment and while I did reactivate my account and have made a few comments since, I am only on there a few minutes a day now (and not every day).

I reset my facebook about a year and a half ago. I had delved into my past lives and friended a bunch of abandoned acquaintances from high school and college, only to rediscover why I had abandoned them.

Now I only follow a very select few relatives, current friends, and various MeFites and former Plastic cohorts, but primarily, music industry vendors. Facebook works very well as my own custom designed commercial showroom.

i find facebook to be useful for events - like being invited to or seeing what's going on in the area. i wish i could be a "calendar and message only" member of fb.

I ditched facebook for years, until I had my daughter and needed a way to share photos with people in Egypt, the Phillipines and all over Australia (aka email would kill their connections, and setting up a flickr account would confuse them and kill their connections). So I reactivated for that but I'm close to ditching it again. It's really handy to keep contact with the wide spread of friends though, and to share things here and there. I hate the settings though, even though I'm totally locked down. But mostly my partner doesn't want the constant stream of messages for me sent via his facebook.

I haven't turned anything fully off. But I've pared down Facebook ruthlessly, little by little. I now really only have family, genuinely close RL friends, and a few select nice people from high school or college or round about who post really interesting things and so I don't want to lose them.

I've come to feel that Facebook sets people up for some weird interactions without really having the support or scaffolding of a genuine shared community, other than that maybe a few people know the same person. It gets weird out there. After a while, you also see sides of people that aren't that enjoyable - the monotonous focus on one topic or other, the argumentative streak, the boring fandom, the vapid or vague comment habit. It gets old, really old. Also, I really did not like the sense that my every new friend add, my every interaction, was becoming raw data for sale to advertisers. Not something I'm super thrilled to participate in, mapping my hard-built life's network for someone else's gain.

I took down pretty much all my personal info and most of my photos. I think I'm kinda trying to wean myself off of it. But at the same time I notice that I kind of prefer to use it like a custom broadcast channel. I lke following businesses and groups, around the country but mainly locally, to get their news and events. It would be great to be able to preserve just this news-subscription function and get rid of the other crap that happens. Which I'm sorta trying to do. But at the same time, I like being able to have chatty conversations here and there. I am eagerly awaiting something better (that's not G+ though) and feel ready to move on.

I killed Google+ a while back and never missed it.

I post something on Facebook approx. every other year. And it's always just a new picture of my kid. I look at it every few days, maybe. I like seeing what people are up to and since I don't watch any TV, it keeps me very slightly in the loop with popular culture. I use my phone, well, as a phone, and a calendar. Also I like to keep pictures of my little kid on it, and videos. Today I was feeling blue and kept playing a little video of him singing in the shower and that was nice. I could easily give up Facebook. I stopped Metafilter completely awhile ago. It sucked up too much time.

i just logged in and apparently missed nothing. one group message i didn't bother reading, a friend request from some dude i worked with in 2003(?!) and haven't talked to since. and a bunch of crap people posted on their newsfeed.

so while i don't think i'll delete it, i think i am perfectly fine just letting it sit there. although i'm trying to find one good reason i should keep it because all my "good" reasons could be solved with an email every now and then to say hi to a friend.

thanks for all of your thoughts, bunnies.