Life without Facebook

Posted by on May 18th, 2017  •  0 Comments  •  Full Article

My last post was written shortly after I got off Facebook. It’s been a month now. I get on about once a day, but only toward the end of the week when I’m communicating with climbing partners. When I’m on it’s just to check messenger, I never look at pictures anymore, or scroll down to look at the feeds of my virtual friends.

I have another friend who did the exact same thing. His work got busy, and he dumped Facebook. I stopped off after work to see him today. It was so refreshing to communicate with a real friend face to face. We used to talk on facebook, or via messenger, or phone. But face to face feels so right.

His girlfriend was there for part of the time and we talked about how humans evolved to need face to face communication. We are still wired that way. It’s not like we’ve evolved past it. Communicating on facebook over pictures, and status updates seems sort of like real life, but it pales in comparison to the real thing.

We spend all those hours peering at these little glass screens, typing cute remarks about photos or politics. And it feels like human communication…but really all you are doing is typing while starting at glass. You don’t get to hear their voices, smell their scent, see the real colors of their eyes, and there expressions as you talk. At the end of the day, it doesn’t work for me. I prefer to have a few real friends, who actually like me enough to see me in person, than 100 facebook ghosts seen on a glass screen.

Despite my avoidance of facebook, I do like to write, mostly to clear my head, but also as a way to have a record of what I was doing, long after I forget about the little day to day details.

I went to Vantage and met Dave D, Roy, JoJo, Ingrid, Vlad and Des. Dave, Roy and I climbed all the moderate cracks, including Pony Keg, Air Guitar, Crossing the threshold, Whipsaw and Tangled up in Blue. I led everything but crossing. Dave was warming up after some time off, and Roy is still learning crack climbing. Sunday I led Steel Grill after following Ride ’em cowboy. Steel Grill wore me out. I had to pull on a cam at the crux. After that I was weak as a puppy. But it was a super fun weekend. At one point I was sitting on the ledge looking out over the lovely afternoon light on the valley down below.

“There’s no place I’d rather be.”

“I hear that,” Dave replied.