Is It Possible to Get Off Facebook?

I am about to try again to get off Facebook.

I have checked out most of the major social media sites -- sorry, but I cannot even imagine liking Pinterest -- and I have found all but Google+ lacking in major ways.

At the time I wrote this post, I had been deactivated for some months on Facebook.  Shortly thereafter, I got involved in the Ride For Pride, and also as a volunteer for the Recovering From Religion hotline.  Ride For Pride was clearly going to be difficult without a Facebook presence... but not impossible.  But  Recovering From Religion told me flat out, I needed to be on Facebook.  So, reluctantly, I reactivated my Facebook account.

Knowing that study after study shows that Facebook is no positive force in almost anyone's life, I did what I could to minimize its effects.  I whitewalled.  I locked down my privacy and sharing settings to the bare minimum.  To keep Facebook's evil javascript and tracking cookies out of my business, I configured my system with a separate browser install into which I isolated my Facebook presence.  All my Facebook activity in this browser.  Everything else -- but NO Facebook -- in that browser.

I forbade my "regular", non-Facebook browser from storing any Facebook cookies or executing any Facebook scripts.  I had to do this because of the dozens of times a week I seem to get tricked.  It's like being Rickrolled but you get taken to Facebook pages when you don't expect to be.  I'd rather get Rickrolled, thanks anyway.  I find it truly obnoxious how many small businesses think they don't need a web page, but a Facebook page will do.

There's a house under that kudzu

So here I go again, trying to extricate myself from this kudzu patch of the Internet.  As soon as I can get some kind of workaround into place for Recovering From Religion, I will be out of there.  Again.

Maybe I will make it a year, this time.