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Having now read through some of this persons comments on the thread it seems a huge area of regret for them is that they didn't export the content before they closed their accounts.

That I can understand is upsetting much like not having backups of family photos and the drive dying. Why they did not export their content I do not know. Facebook, etc. have all had "check out" functionality for many years now, all before the pandemic hit.

Seems they rushed into closing their accounts rather than exporting and backing all those memories up and without any kind of plan on what to do to fill the social void it would great. As a commenter wrote in reply to them "I gave up eating McDonald's everyday but now I have no food."

I guess people should "deactivate" their socials rather than "deleting" them if they are not entirely sure. I left Instagram and Facebook a year ago but I cam go back whenever I want to.

Right! I simply abandoned Facebook. Changed my password, deleted my cookies, stopped going there. If I need to, I can look up the password and login. For example, I needed to participate in the event page for the local burn. Then I deleted my cookies again.

Yes. I also don't understand this thing about deleting social media accounts. Just don't login and don't look at the app? Why delete, removing your history permanently?

I suspect there's something psychological going on. The mere existance of the profile and history, not active use, causes mental strain.

Social media is addictive (edit: to some people). It's like telling an alcoholic "why bother throwing away the beer in your fridge, keep it around if a friend comes over and wants to drink, why is it so hard to just not drink it?"

Many people go the extra mile and delete data because they would rather not have a social networking company use it in their absence.

Seems like a big difference though. Deactivating should make all your content hidden until you reactivate.

I don't understand the desire to delete them. It seems to stem from the misconception that this triggers the service to delete everything in their ad targeting profiles. They don't delete everything they know about you just because you delete your account, though, as they maintain those dossiers even about people who don't have accounts.

That's why I keep the account. And there's slim chance of any imposter trying to create one in my place, though I guess after all these years that is less likely.

I've tried a few times to export my data from Facebook and it's never worked for me. I request it and it just silently fails.

You don't realize how expensive these so called free platforms are until you try to leave. You will never recover much of what you invested. It is a hard lesson for many.

Yeah, this person screams mental issues to me. He has all these weird extremist overthought concepts about social interactions.

Maybe autistic or with some heavy anxiety.

Not exactly news worthy IMO...

It's just reddit-brain, IMO. You're right, it's not news worthy.

I saw it happen to a few people from my high school. Above average IQ people spending too much time reading reddit and ending up with some weirdly elitist but also juvenile opinions on social interactions. Stuff like "DAE think small talk is pointless?" or "I never realized how impossible it is to make friends in adulthood" is pretty common.

Subs like /r/relationships, /r/offmychest, /r/amitheasshole, etc. are the worst because while the topics are about offline, real-life encounters, it's mostly just very-online, neuroatypical folks sharing their thoughts. One ends up thinking they're getting a fair majority perspective, when really you're getting the perspective of what's otherwise a pretty marginal outgroup.

> "I never realized how impossible it is to make friends in adulthood" is pretty common.

Articles about this topic have been on very respected news sites for awhile, so at least that one exists outside the bubble you're referring to.

I have plenty of non-online friends who are not on reddit who keep telling me that it's difficult to make friends in adulthood so, yes it's rather common outside of that bubble.

Some people just never really learned to initiate new friendship and only relied on people inviting them, being in a university with events helping new friendships etc..

>”He has all these weird extremist overthought concepts about social interactions.”

This seems like a good description for most of Reddit. I have a feeling that the platform’s karma system is geared towards incentivizing these kinds of posts and thought patterns.

It's both less and more specific than that. Subreddits are ideal (or at least best-yet) implementations echo chambers. A particular idiosyncratic groupthink emerges for each subreddit, and the platform then filters incoming communications according to it. Because it's gamified, people are actively competing to conform to the local cultures.

And here we are, where some guy believes that rekindling a prior conversation with a friend or acquaintance is psychotic.

> There is nothing "psychotic" about signing up again and adding some old friends again

Maybe not so extreme but if an old friend added me on Facebook I would immediately assume they want something…

But I have to say, I still have Facebook on my phone, and open it from time to time, and it’s pretty barren. I think the consensus among my peers is that sharing something on Facebook is signaling that you’re socially undesirable… so if he signs up again, I think he will find it doesn’t help at all.

(Though I still like Facebook as a contact list of last resort)

> but if an old friend added me on Facebook I would immediately assume they want something

Fair point as this person does want something. They want that friendship back.

If an old friend adds me on Facebook and then starts trying to sell me some vitamin programme that is very different to if they add me back and are like "Oh man I've missed you, I deleted Facebook but it's so hard as an adult with a job, etc. to keep in touch with people isn't it? How you and the family doing? I'm sorry I just cut off contact like that, I thought it would be better but I was so wrong".

It all depends on the motives and actions. It seems this person is sincere in that they feel they really screwed up just cutting all social ties how they did.

> Fair point as this person does want something. They want that friendship back.

If a friendship stops existing because you delete a Facebook account, it was never a friendship. Or at least wasn't one by then.

It doesn’t always work that way. We sometimes have friends we might not stay actively in touch with, but are able to pick up where we left off when we are back in contact. Friendships are complex.

Ok but then they wouldn't have been lost by deleting the Facebook, the person could just get back in touch. But they seem to believe it would be weird (psychotic even?) if they did, which to me points to them not being actual friendships.

I think there is a difference between 'liking' an old friend's stuff, who you're no longer in actual contact with (not talking or meeting or anything), and kind of re-instating contact by 'adding friend' - even if you only intend to occasionally 'like' stuff in the same way as above, they don't know that after all.

The author explicitly mentions that they want their casual friendships back though:

> It’s perfectly okay to have causal online friends from school, childhood, work etc and only talk through social media and keep up that way.

> I think the consensus among my peers is that sharing something on Facebook is signaling that you’re socially undesirable…

That's fine, because OP missed their friends who do share on Facebook, not your status-chasing peers and their current Meta meta.

> There is nothing "psychotic" about signing up again and adding some old friends again

In fact - I did that, and my facebook (and Twitter) experiences have been a lot better, since I was a lot more careful about who I added. I quit Facebook years ago (around the time of the 2016 election) because I had so many casual acquaintances on my feed posting things I really didn't want to be reading, but then I felt weird going through and unfriending them one by one. I re-joined just recently and I have only a handful of people on my feed who only post positive things, and it's actually a pleasant experience.

> You don't have to go to absolute zero for social media to cut out the majority of the toxic stuff but still get some of the benefits from it.

Just turning notifications off for all of them is a pretty good balance for me. That way I'm only opening them when I think to do it.

I'd highly recommend that as a first step if anyone's feeling overwhelmed and considering what OP did.

If that does not work, then dropping phone off on a ledge by the front door with the keys is what works for me.

> Seems to me like this is somebody that took things too far with a total cut of all social contact rather than just removing some of the more toxic elements of social media from their lives.

My takeaway. It's not enough to cut off social media if it consumes your life, you have to replace it with something. We're social creatures that require validation.

> cant make a new Facebook in 2023 and add all these old friends. Literally psychotic behavior.

I'm pretty sure Facebook 'archives' your account and allows reactivation just for people in this position...

You can do that or permanently delete your account.

I've quit social media as well and I've found that it's very difficult to stay in touch with most friends who aren't in the vicinity.

They never initiate contact while communicating nonstop with everyone on social media- just not me. It started when I left social media.

I think that we have all been trained to expect communication to come as a social media post, message, like, emoji, etc. It's too much effort to reach out to one person privately.

   > It's too much effort to reach out to one person privately.

And yet millions of people do it every day, so it's not too much effort. The difference is we reach out to those that we have more than a superficial connection to. If we develop real relationships. they won't rely solely on low effort communication.