I finally left

I did it. I broke free. I also got a big shock. But then I finally did it. I left FB, For many it isn't much of an achievement, but yeah for me it sure is. Looking back, thanks to the big hype train, I had joined it 2008. Just to be a part of the cool kids group. Back in the day when people were lucky enough to own a computer I had one with a 128 kbps internet. It's been almost 9 years since. Today my net speed has only increased 8 times. Not shabby as long as it gets the work done. All that aside, to be frank it wasn't easy. When I had joined, I used to spend about an hour a week, which later increased to an hour a day in a few weeks if not days, and then by the time I completed my 9th grade I used to spend 3-4 hours a day, mostly engrossed in totally stupid shit like Farmville. Thats when my dad, punched me back on track, quite literally actually, I hated him a lot then. However, I'm really thankful to him for doing that back then. Thats when 10th grade arrived and I used to be very very busy in studies. Most of my day used to be spent in cram school and high school. I wonder if I continued to study that way, maybe I would've had much better pointer, but then whats done been done and we must look forward now. 

After my 10th exams where done, though I was "busy" or more like "engrossed(kinda not true)" with my IIT prep classes, I still used FB a lot. I got my own phone with a speedy 90 kbps GPRS and with that came a shit load of fb again. When I was in 12th I got a hold of my brother's used Android smartphone, and boy, I reduced my time on FB. Yeah I reduced greatly, probably because I was in 12th but mainly because I was now frequenting XDA forums more. Yeah I got into Android development, something which I hate now, but used to love back then. I used to make themes for CM 7.2, my stock rom and the rest. I used to have a new ROM or theme almost every week. Thats when I got into kernel development ( a bit) and compiled my kernel from sources. It had a great overclock almost double and I bragged all about it on FB. My college friends couldn't believe what they saw and it was fun. However, the overclock was a bad idea as my phone didn't last much long after that. It's battery life had worsened to the point that it only lasted a few hours on full charge. Thats when I was back to my good ol' brick phone.

That year I received a gift, an iPod Touch 4G. And again my time on FB increased leaps and bounds. I used to be totally hooked to it, almost all day long. And since I was now in Uni, there was no one to stop me. I found a lot of friends, a lot picky ones who wouldn't use the popular messaging service Whatsapp and that led me to spending way more time on FB. I also did a bit of spying stuff then. All this good time brought a big fat bomb. The KT bomb. I had managed to get 2 KTs in my first sem. I was shocked, didn't know what to do, devastated, and almost ready to kill my self. That was the only time FB helped me(I dunno if it really helped me or not, but then I'm still alive and you are reading this). I hadn't learn't my lesson. I still used to spend a lot of time on FB. And thats when I managed to get 1 KT again. It was around this time that I found reddit (which I kinda love hate).

Finally I had realized. I had to reduce my time on FB. I got a new phone around this time and since it had FB pre-install it was hard to reduce, somehow I managed. This time around I got no KTs and was happy. Around this time I had a 3G internet pack that gave unlimited access to FB, Whatsapp and other SNS sites. It was tempting, but then I had some control over me. FB was kinda substituted by anime by this point. And I watched a hell lot of anime. I still watch anime, but not as much. Back on track, by this point I had realized I had to do something about my FB addiction. So I started deactivating my account to see how many days I could live without it. The duration used to be short. It used to range from 8 hrs to 3 days max. Thats when I started coding.

I started making AR apps, python scripts to have some fun, basic level designs in unreal engine (which is great, I regret deleting the 10 gb I downloaded then) and started working on compute vision. I started spending lesser and lesser time on FB. I was back to point when I only spent, 1 hr per week. Thats when I decided to see, what would happen if I deactivated my account. This time I didn't touch it for almost 6 months. The time when I even activated it, it was for a giveaway in which I got Killing Floor 2. I don't play the game but it is good to have. The next time, I activated it to wish my cousin happy birthday (I could have just called her anyways). My account was deactivated until a few weeks ago I decided to reactivate it just to test an app.

Somehow, after scrolling through the list of BS and shitload of selfies, I decided I hate to delete. This time for real. So then after mustering my courage I decided to pull the plug and I did. I still have 13 days at the time of writing this post, to reactivate, but this time I won't. I have so much more to share, maybe I'll make a follow up post to this as what was my takeaway on the whole FB thing and what do I plan to do in the future. Besides this one thing I forgot to mention is that my account was hacked almost thrice and it freaked me out. Anyways, this has been a long one. See you in the next post. Till then feel free, to leave a comment below, if you left a SNS and what was experience like. 😄

P.S. I haven't proofread this, as I gotta eat my dinner. Sorry for any errors. 😓