Going Off the Grid

I have been gone from Facebook for about three months now. It was like a bad relationship that you just keep coming back for, but was able to detach myself just in time for the bar.

All this social media and keeping in touch had its uses (i.e. stalking), but I seem to have grown out of it. Facebook has its uses though for people like my mom, who has never seen her friends for decades. Her favorite photo is a group picture taken of her when she was in the Kalayaan dorm wearing bootleg jeans and a midriff-bearing shirt.

But all the drama, the bragging, the self-absorbed-ness has taken its toll. The last time I used Facebook, I was bombarded with all sorts of pictures and information that I just didn't want to see. What started out as a fun way to connect with old friends turned out to be the easiest way for people to connect annoy. Facebook used to be fun, and then it turned out to be the most efficient way to make you do (school-related) work - which you obviously don't want to do when you want to maximize "personal time".

While this began as a novelty (a pleasurable way to waste time), became an annoyance, and then a source of dread. While all these advances have made information available in a lot of places at the same time, the viewer has the difficult burden of sifting through trash.

All this interconnectedness is making us lose our mystery, which is is what reunions are for. By going off the grid, I communicate on my own terms, and only with true friends. It makes life simpler. And this is how the magic works, even if there seems to be a scarcity of it nowadays.


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The following are Alexandria Topacio's other blog entries:

• #01 - The Third Player
• #02 - The Good, the Bad, and the Possibilities with the Google Book Scanning Deal
• #03 - Participatory History in the Age of Disposable Technology
• #04 - The Potential of Location-Based Apps (I want to be Mayor of UP Law)
• #05 - Christmas Village
• #06 - A Recipe for Intellectual Property
• #07 - The Armchair Doctor (Dangers of Online Self-Diagnosis)
• #08 - The Anti-Medici
• #09 - Security Blankets and Being Anti-Social
• #10 - The Blind Eye of Providence (Online Endorsement and Disclosure)
• #11 - The Professor and the Eye at the Back of his Head
• #12 - Note-Taking Apps/Information Managers for Law School
• #13 - We, The Facebook (Digging for Dirt and Ditching Jury Duty)
• #14 - The Toughest Place to be a Bus Driver
• #15 - 2011 Bar Exam Woes
• #16 - Death of Lawyers and The Rise of the Machine
• #17 - Going Off The Grid