Rumour has it Mark Zuckerberg, chief founder of Facebook, is considering a presidential run.
While that might sound conspiratorial, not to mention a tad random coming from me, a self-confessed troglodyte of all things technical, I can't help but wonder if Zuckerberg's presidential debut could be the final push I need to permanently pull the plug on my meagre Facebook presence entirely.
I've long sought an excuse to commit FB hari kari - maybe this is it.
Many of you might wonder why I am even asking myself these questions.
Who in their right mind would give up Facebook?
Use it less, sure; stop posting so much, maybe; but give it up? Am I nuts?
That last question will dominate conversation well into posterity - but perhaps that's why I'm in the right mind to give up Facebook.
I have this nagging suspicion that I'm not really supposed to have unearned, immediate access to your marital status, political views, children's names or the various toys in your garage. I ought to have a relationship with you to know those things, and if I really cared about your latest achievement, I'd give you real encouragement with a phone call, not a thumbs up.
Speaking of phone calls, if FB has one thing that is indispensable to modern life, it certainly isn't the selfies or even the FB groups - it's the messenger/chat service that allows you to call anyone with an internet connection and an account anywhere in the world. I honestly don't know what I'd do without it - there's still Skype, but given the amount of problems on that service, I'm nervous to give up FB chat.
While I'm still on social media, I've taken certain intentional steps, like reducing my friends list to less than one hundred people with a very simple algorithm.
It's called the "would I buy this person a beer/dinner" algorithm.
I can say with confidence now that I would actually have an awesome two-sided conversation with everyone on my Facebook in real life over a drink or a meal.
I feel pretty good about that, and what's more, I don't have to filter through people's posts to see something I care about.
This last point is key. People you fight with on meaningless threads, political or Pokmon based, are not the people you ought to be talking to.
I'm not advocating echo chambers, I'm telling you that screeds, rants and awful comments that you would never say in public are just that.
I confess that I've been guilty of this as well; but the negativity and stress associated with them are just not worth it.
The inhumanly unfettered, unearned access to one another it allows us to have is scary.
There are people living for the next like on their latest political view or immodest photo, and there is another group of people stalking these posters to sate themselves on their all too familiar tone or behaviour.
This is not how human relationship is supposed to be. And I'd argue it's changing who and what we are.
That is why I have serious doubts about allowing Zuckerberg into the White House.
Obviously, I don't have a vote, but if Marshall McLuhan was right about "the medium being the message," anyone who does have a vote should be skeptical about a man who profits so greatly from banality and misery becoming the chief executive officer of their government as well.
Of course, we could beat him at his prospective game and simply change our social media behaviour now.
