The beauty of sending a lot of messages to friends and informing them about your inevitable departure is the fact that you find plenty of pleasant and unexpected surprises. Some folks confess that they would do the same if it wasn't for some kind of work or university-related obligation, while others simply express really nice thoughts and act in a sympathetic way.
Messaging every friend is a great way to reconnect with people you haven't spoken to in years. Then you rediscover that time is a mere illusion and we're all the same, but slightly older. Having a brief conversation like the last five years have passed over night and the distance is a mere illusion can be incredibly comforting.
It all might seem a little too bombastic, as this article overuses positive adjectives. However, it's true: even though Facebook keeps you in a bubble which only allows you to see a few people's posts (something about which I've complained in previous posts), some people don't forget about you and act as nicely as in the day you've met them. It's a discovery that I would have probably never made if I didn't come up with the radical intention of deleting Facebook.
And now that I've made it this far, I've come to discover that my dream of exchanging postcards by real and tangible mail services is more feasible than I thought. Some of my foreign friends were thrilled about the idea of being able to communicate in a more meaningful way. I feel like I'm rediscovering something important that I've forgotten along the way, and I hope that the feeling will not fade any time soon.
On the other hand, I know that socially-dark and lonesome times are ahead of me. I will no longer have a crowd of people to give me validation for a picture with my new haircut. I won't be able to brag about my accomplishments and see how my aunt slightly embarrasses me in public. Also, I won't be able to share my thoughts and bad jokes to a more or less like-minded people.
It might sound like I'm getting rid of something toxic, but at the same time it's the toxicity which was been part of my life for the last 9 years. My brain has been rewired to give me small amounts of dopamine every 15 minutes when I check my newsfeed and notice another like or comment. I've scrolled that feed for hours and could never find its bottom, though the amount of friends whose posts I saw was limited by Facebook's restrictive preference-based algorithms – unless you stalk people or actively communicate with them, you most likely won't see their updates.
Anyway, this feels great up to this point. Planning to delete Facebook has temporarily improved my virtual social life and I've received unexpected positive reactions. Now it's going to be interesting to see how the situation changes as the inevitable departure quickly approaches. In the meantime, I just have a few hundreds of friends to message.