The Voice: Dan Palmere's Blog

Face It, Article published in "The Groove"

Check out my recent article published in The Groove, the Berklee student newspaper.

Spam

Annoyance. One of many words to describe the flutter of new messages in your spam folder each morning.

I'm not sure how I get so many. I've eliminated my email from some of my other sites. Other strategies helped for a short while, but I've gotten something like 100 today alone.

To help others and myself, I've been forwarding all my spam messages to the FTC. As quoted from their site: "If you get spam email that you think is deceptive, forward it to spam@uce.gov. The FTC uses the spam stored in this database to pursue law enforcement actions against people who send deceptive email."

This at least prevent repeat senders from reaching my inbox again. Here's to waking up one morning with no offers to inherit half the funds from the son of the deposed king of Nigeria.

Face it, you don't need it.

Recently, I was sitting in my apartment clicking around on my laptop. After refreshing the Facebook home page 6 times within 15 minutes, I knew this web social networking site had become a part of my life--in an unhealthy way. Honestly, how is the site helping me in a positive way? I don't consider, though some may, wishing happy birthday to people who you don't really even talk to, deciding a might attend an event I was invited to, making inane  comments on statuses, or the ever-classic "Facebook stalking", a positive step forward in life. 

So, as the New Year approaches I decided a great way to start would be to delete my account. My first blog post will explain the steps YOU need to take if you're considering removing yourself from what now seems to be an "online life existence". I anticipate not having this extra burden in the New Year and developing more actual social networking skills--rather than hiding behind a big wall.  

How to Successfully Delete Your Facebook Account

1. Consider the reasons why you signed up in the first place. All your friends were on it? Now, look at how you use it. If it's just to interact with your close friends, I feel phone or email is a better means. If you are actually meeting people, using it to keep tabs with long distance family and friends, or share photos, then it might be worth hanging onto for awhile. 
2. If your reasons to delete your account outweigh the reasons to stick around, then the next step is to start saving ALL your pictures to your computer in a separate folder. This includes all your profile photos and tagged albums. 
3. Once all your pictures are stored safely, make your way to the main "Birthdays" page. Go through each month and copy all the birthday dates you feel are relevant into a Word document. This will allow you to keep track of your friend's birthdays outside Facebook. Think about how much more it means to call someone or send an email on their birthday than just a wall post. 
4. After you have this information, go through your friends list and copy contact information for people who know you want to keep in touch with or just aren't sure. Usually an email address, phone number, or screen name will be displayed. 
5. That's the bulk of the work. I suggest a week before you delete your account, update your status frequently letting people know you're deleting Facebook and how they will be able to keep in touch. There will be tons of people frantically wondering why you would do such a thing. You can just sit back and laugh at all this, because that's usually the moment people realize how petty and time consuming the use of Facebook has been. 
6. If you feel like you still may be using Facebook, but want to keep the account, fear not. In the settings menu, there is a "deactivate" option. Clicking on that will walk you through deactivating the account. This does not mean the account has been deleted. It's simply a "vacation setting". This might help you decide better if you truly need Facebook or not.
7. If you're ready to take the leap, follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account (Note: Selecting this option will take 14 days to fully process. If you log in during those 2 weeks, your account will be reactivated).