Monday April 30^th (my birthday) I’ll be deleting my Facebook account. I do this now and again when I need to lazer-focus on my work, but this hiatus might last longer than a month. I might even stay off of Facebook forever. If you want to keep in touch, subscribe here to lanceschaubert.org, follow me on most sites @lanceschaubert or be really freaking hip and join my growing list of pen pals.

Here’s seven reasons why:

1. The Facebook Sonnet by Sherman Alexie speaks truer than I would like. I’m unsure if it’s healthy to unmend the present by putting everyone I’ve ever known from everywhere in the same room. If this were real life and that happened and there were some battle axes lying around, they’d send in the National Guard before the night was over.
2. Work’s stacking up – both paid and unpaid. I’ve several deadlines coming up, chief over them is the end of my novel’s third draft. Lazer focus time.
3. My bride needs it—As we continue to ask questions like, “What will it be like for our kids to grow up in a social media world?” we recognize as many pitfalls as benefits for social media. Kind of like Walmart—it’s convenient, but at what cost? Kiddo would like to start her blog and enter into a season of reflection for the future. You’d better believe I’m supporting her in that. We’re also getting rid of TV for a month. We don’t own cable, but we do rent the DVD sets of TV shows. You’re all more than welcome to join us in this and post reflections here.
4. Life Events—People got ticked at me when they found out I had THE SHINGLES on Facebook, then vented said feelings on Facebook. Though my gut response was “I’m ticked I found out you got ticked for finding out about my shingles on Facebook on Facebook!” I refrained. Until now. Add to this absurdity the birth of babies, the wedding of couples, etc. that were never communicated through phone or invites or texts and I think there’s a bit of a problem. If we were pregnant, I’d want to deactivate Facebook and control the leak. No, we’re not pregnant—“we” as in the collective entity that is Schaubert. However, if we were pregnant, I don’t think I’d want mom to find out on my website, let alone in some status update.
5. Consumption VS Production—As I said in the gushy post about WordPress’ awesomeness, I value production-oriented social media over consumption-oriented. Facebook is the latter—a time drain of fabled magnitude. You people on here actually interact over stuff that matters, even if it matters on some small scale.
6. Freaky Stalker People—To my knowledge, I’ve not friended any serial killers… yet. As I don’t write horror stories, I can’t even justify said adding on the basis of research. Because of this, freaky stalker people get ticked at us for refusing to add them, even though they shook hands with our sister while we stopped at Penn Station in Central Illinois. These messages creep us out and help me sympathize with the literary agents who get stalkers every year. I know, I used to be one before I ponied up and purchased a brain that didn’t have a label on it like “Abby Normal.” Mel Brooks anyone?
7. Immanent IPO—As Facebook moves toward their initial public offering, they keep doing things to generate more profit. Since their profit is based on abusing the connections we have as people, the changes I haven’t like will only get worse. Foremost: their abuse of the word “Story.”

I have other reasons, I’m sure, but why bore you? Instead, how about another xkcd comic:

PS> Need a writer? I work for free on May Day!