February 2, 2023

Sort of Digital Decluttering

Today I deactivated my Facebook account, it’s not the first time. I deleted my entire Facebook account in, I think, 2018 until early 2020. I can’t remember the reason I rejoined.

The reason I deactivated my account this time is because I’m currently doing a sort of digital declutter which is thanks to reading two books in January, Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, both by computer scientist and professor Cal Newport.

One part of my sort of digital declutter requires that I stay off Facebook, but don’t tell anyone and see if anyone notices.

If no one bothers to contact me and say, Hey, you’re not on Facebook anymore!” then I know Facebook is a waste of time and I can then ditch it again for good. I’m writing this short blog post with the confidence that no one actually reads these posts.

It’s a sort of digital declutter because I’ve only deactivated Facebook, it’s the only place where people engage with me, so if my goal is to see if anyone notices I’m gone, then Facebook is the right trial environment. I deleted the Twitter, Mastodon and Instagram apps off of my iPad, but kept Reddit because I don’t ever do things properly.

Talking about Reddit, I had a fight with a moderator of the /r/southafrica subreddit last weekend and I got a permanent ban, which is the first time I’ve been banned online in my life, so looks like I’m making progress as a human.

Anyway, I hope no one reads this so my very scientific, double-blind, placebo controlled trial doesn’t fail.

#Digital Minimalism
Previous post
GrapheneOS Rabbit Hole In my last post on this tiny blog I confessed that my iPhone got stolen and I purchased a dumbphone. I’m happy to report that I’m still using my
Next post
Durban-Style Scrambled Eggs Many chefs will tell you not to mess with scrambled eggs. They say things like, “it’s all about the eggs” while continuously stirring eggs with