Monday, November 21, 2011

No More Facebook, and No More Netflix

I've spent some time, recently, in the decision of whether or not I should cancel Netflix....AND Facebook!  Well, the decision has been made and I am no longer a member of Facebook, and I canceled my instant queue on Netflix.  Wow - amazing huh?  That's what I think.  Why did I do this - well, there are several reasons.  Let's start with Netflix first shall we.
During the summer, most of you Netflix users like myself, received an email explaining a price increase.  Boy oh boy, did this shoot me over the edge.  Yes, most of you saw/heard my outrage on this matter.  A few months later they sent another email stating that they would be changing the way they are doing things on Netflix.  This was the final straw that broke the camels back.  BUT, I still decided to stay with them.  Although, I should be super busy with school this last semester, I have found that having both the DVD, and instant viewing were ending up being too much money, and a waste of my time.  I was using the instant queue a lot more then the DVDs.  All of my time was going to stupid shows, like the TV shows Felicity (which I sadly sat through all four seasons - good thing they canceled because I was about to cancel) and My So Called Life which I still can't seem to get through and it's ONLY one season.  It took some time and thought in the matter, but after my Sis took the plunge and canceled her instant queue I decided I should follow her footsteps and do the same.  She canceled due to wasting too much time also.  It feels good to cut that out of my life, for the time being.  The great thing about Netflix is that any time I want to go back to my old ways I can, and they are willing to always take me back with open arms.  Seven more months till graduation, and my gift to myself is adding back my instant queue on Netflix.
Facebook and I have had a love hate relationship for some time.  It took me some time to join, and it was late one night around 1:00am when I took the plunge.  I knew what I was getting myself into at the very beginning.  I joined and loved it.  I thought, this is great, I am able to keep in touch with those people I have met in Alaska, and with those from my years of serving a mission in Kentucky and Ohio.  Recently, I have found myself on this website all the time.  I am not doing anything productive when I am on the website, I spend hours looking, and looking, and looking.  I rarely comment, and when I do my email is flooded with notifications.  However, the notifications stopped suddenly when Facebook made some new changes to their website.  It was a breath of fresh air for me, but not receiving those emails was making it hard for me to know what was going on in Facebook land.  As I was not knowing via email notifications, it made me hop on to Facebook more frequently, and thus I would spend more hours just looking.  I guess what it comes down to is I have no self control?

As I was perusing Facebook a few weeks back (when I should've been doing homework), I found that my cousins wife Shellie wasn't on Facebook anymore.  I was shocked and concerned.  It was late, so I decided that the next day I would contact her and ask her what was going on.  She informed me that it had become too much for her.  Her constant Facebook perusing was getting out of hand, so she canceled her Facebook.  Way to go Shellie, for setting the stage for me.  After much thought and serious consideration I have done the same.  It wasn't like I made the decision over night.  I thought about all the pro's and con's Facebook causes me, and then decided to cancel.  No more offending other people by comments I leave (which I had done recently), no more tagging pictures of people who don't want pictures tagged, and no more wasting my time spending countless hours looking into the lives of people I care and don't care about.  Now that sounds rude, but most the people I'm friends with on Facebook already are people I have contact with by other means. The other people are just those who haven't seen me in years and wanted a quick look into my life right now, and by so doing they had to "add me as their friend."  All along I should've listened to my Bro, "Facebook is stupid, haven't you heard of a phone?"  Yes little Bro, you are right, I have the ones I love dearly right at my phone, or email.  What else do I need?

There it is - I canceled Netflix (just instant queue) and Facebook.  Now I'm loving life even more...or finding more to do that doesn't involve me wasting my time!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Good for you! Our problem with Netflix is the opposite, though. We hardly ever watch anything on it, so I almost think it's a waste of money. But we're too lazy to cancel it, I guess.

You and so many other people had been warning me about Facebook! I think that really helped so that when I joined I tried to be really cautious. Then I've gotten increasingly looser about Facebook. Right now, I'm actually enjoying it. But, you're right, I'm mostly just contacting people I see or email anyway. But it has been nice to keep in touch with a few of the people I never see. Anyway, we'll see how it goes. I probably go on there too much, but I really don't care what a lot of people are up to.

Blogging is still my favorite, though.

Anyway, congrats on taking the plunge! I hope you can survive. What are you going to do with all your time?! I know you already read books...

Anisa said...

Here is my two cents.... I think TV watching and movie watching is a waste of time... but that's just me. I would much rather be doing something.

At night when I finally sit down, I enjoy spending a little time on facebook and pinterest. But I'm only on there for maybe 15 minutes a day. I have no idea how anyone could spend more time than that... what on earth do you do for that long?

MinDee said...

Hmmm...for as often as you say you were on fb. I never did see you there, or maybe cuz you were 'offline' I'll miss you on there! Now we'll have to do 3 way calls to chat with Alisha and get our dates scheduled.