Farewell Facebollox

I pulled the plug on the failed experiment that was Facebollox. Gone, vorbei, tschüß! I had to give my password again and jump through another hoop to delete the fucking thing permanently. Even then they want 14 days before putting it out of its misery forever, but I've wiped my hands of the whole thing.
I had 205 “friends” in the end. Not bad for something I put no effort into and practically never looked at. I'm sorry, Tam, that our friendship was so brief. It lasted only as long as it took to end my Facebook life, but I hope you realize it wasn't you that pushed me over the edge. I'd already decided long ago I'd had enough.

Here's the (corrected) Facebollox suicide note I left behind a week or so ago:
Dear Facebook friends, Berliners, countrymen, women and children, and any others whose eyes may fall upon these words – not literally of course, that would be most unfortunate – I am writing to tell you I'm pulling the plug on my involvement in this experiment in frivolous futility.
In truth, I was never much involved in it to begin with. I've left that to others, and the sheer futility of their frivolity has put me off contributing my own.
I originally signed up to publicize the blog for some strange reason, a cry for help perhaps, but have since nurtured a 'je ne donne pas un merde' attitude to all things attention-seeking and time-consuming. Time is precious. Attention is nice, but it's not precious.
I've also developed a healthy suspicion of all the “friends” I've managed to gather despite never having met, seen or even heard of most of them. My suspicions are founded on the realization it's easier to make friends on Facebook that enemies in reality. Something ain't quite right there.
I only ever managed to stay logged in for short periods before panic set in and I left hastily in a flurry of curses, angry at myself again for having wasted part of my life reading some unknown friend's description of their new toothbrush, fending off invitations to take part in games involving sodomy and animals, or realizing with dismay that real friends were sending me messages already well past their reply-to date. It's easier to make enemies on Facebook than friends in reality.
That's the thing. I treasure my friends, my real friends, I really do. I like meeting them, talking to them, writing to them, joking with them, finding out how they're doing, but all that shit is so cluttered by the other shit that there's no time for the real shit.
By discarding Facebook friends – deleting them with the push of a button (if it's that easy) – I hope to reclaim real friends, reconnect with real people. If nothing else it'll cut out an unnecessary distraction, allowing a little more time for other unnecessary distractions.
So this here account will be gone, vorbei, in, say, a week. Fuck it, there's no point in dragging it out any further. If I remember to log in again in a week's time I'll delete it then.
I'll still be contactable of course, and would be delighted to welcome as many of you as possible into my other Facebook-less world. I'm on Twitter (https://twitter.com/IrishBerliner), on the blog (http://www.irishberliner.com/) contactable by email (surname first-letter-of-my-first-name @ gmail dot com, all without spaces), and of course by phone (which I ain't gonna give here, I'm not crazy).
As I type a child is crying. Perhaps he doesn't like goodbyes either. More likely he just needs attention. Like we all do.
Slán agus Alles Gute,
Der Irische Berliner.

That was it. I made it sound like I was leaving with a heavy heart, but the long and short of it is that I quit Facebook because it's shite. Others may like it and I'll respect their deluded opinions but as far as I'm concerned it's shite. I'm not the only one. Jean Hannah Edelstein summed it all up beautifully in The Guardian.
I do reserve the right to shamelessly abuse Facebollox at some stage in future if commercial reasons for doing so make themselves apparent. For now, I have neither the wherewithal nor the will to even wonder what those reasons could be. It's time to move onto other things.