Originally Posted by
GracefulRoll
No, I didn't defriend you.
I defriended everyone. I deactivated my account. It's nothing to do with any one of you individually. Just a personal preference.
Keep reading below if you really just don't get why or if you think it's really about you. It's not. Trust me. It's so much bigger than that. I like all of you, but FB is such a huge leech of your privacy. I warn you: it's a long story.
"Why wouldn't she want to be on FB?" "But it's such a good photo!" I don't care. I don't want it on the internet. As anyone who read threads about me from December or whatever, they'd know I had cancer.
For 6 months, I had people poking, prodding, examining, analyzing, diagnosing, evaluating, and questioning me. It was everything from how I'm feeling, when was the last time I pooped, if I felt safe in my home environment, if my pee is consistently dark yellow or smelly, if they could do a breast exam, check me for sores (including examining my butt cheeks), if I have ever been diagnosed with any diseases, etc My body was not my own.
I was woken out of my sleep twice a night while hospitalized to get my temperature, blood pressure, oxygen levels taken and to get blood drawn every morning at 4 a.m. Sure, I could have discharged myself, but that would mean I would die. What kind of choice is that? If I had a temperature, it was really drained because they feared infection. It had to be drawn from both my central line and from an arm. Sometimes they couldn't get it out of my arm, so they went to my wrist and when that didn't work, my hands, and then next was probably my feet. Sometimes I had 5 nurses in my room at 4 a.m. to get two tubes of blood because my veins were so weak from the disease and treatment.
And this is why I'm just not into sharing of photos of myself, having to go and change privacy settings constantly so people stop adding me to groups to which I don't want to belong (annoying) or letting tagged photos of me be visible. This is especially true of recent photos of me drinking while sweaty, unshowered, and unaware the photo was taken. I'm pretty sure I'm in about 6000 photos on FB and I'm just not tagged, but what happens if someone sees it and is like, "Oh, I know her! TAG!" This does happen. It has happened before. I know this is not a big deal to a lot of people, but most of these people have jobs and are totally comfortable with most things in their lives.
People have become desensitized and I'm not blaming anybody specifically. Everyone has a camera and everyone has the internet.
I've had problems with people posting unfortunate photos of me (think very tarty Halloween costume complete with tarty makeup) before and I didn't even consent to the photo, and neither request to delete entirely or remove the photo from the internet was respected because said person didn't care that I found it uncomfortable. To avoid this, I'm just deleting FB. It's the easiest and what would seem to everyone else fair thing to do because a lot of people feel put off when you tell them what to do with their own photos, even if it's of you. I'm still regaining that sense of control (whether it was real or ever truly lost) over myself and what happens to me or images of me. Privacy doesn't truly exist anymore, but a sense of it does really matter to me.
Social media is fun and also scary as ****.
If I seemed really paranoid when I asked any of you to not tag me in photos, this is why. This truly is a case of "it's not you; it's me." If you read this post, that's proof enough you know me and give a damn. You can PM me for my email address and phone number.
If you think any of this is stupid and are rolling your eyes, guess empathy isn't really your strong point.