The time has come to cull my facebook account. This is both a personal decision and a cultural one. Afterall, cultural change is an individual’s responsibility.

I’m tired of people feeling like having a mark on someone, a way of contacting them because they maybe crossed paths at one point, takes care of actually engaging people. I’m sad the drama and shallow exchanges facebook not only permits but, by its very infrastructure, encourages.If you want to take action with me, find me in these places. If you want to actually talk to me, you can find me via text or in person or at an event or during office hours.

This is part of my finally establishing personal boundaries on my time. My core group of friends get the vast majority of my time. Maybe this round will even stick. The world is, afterall, full of shiny and awesome people. This is not me saying I don’t care about who you are or what you do – it’s that I no longer have the bandwidth to share it with you so much. I can trust you to take care of your section of the world, yes? And you want me to be happy and focused, even if that doesn’t involve you? Awesome. I’m glad we can agree.

I want it to be ok for people to grow out of a time in their life. I want attention to go to the things immediately around people and their interests, not some trivial game with someone they had one (albeit amazing) conversation with two years ago. Let life be a process, a continuum, let go of the things that are done.

The only thing Facebook has going for it is critical mass. And that won’t change unless we, as individuals, take the detriment to our social currency to choose to interact in better forums. You won’t lose the people you actually care about, promise. Everyone else is just your cognitive heat sync.

Now that I’m done with the first phase of deleting things, I’m left with this weird middle ground – the people I talk to regularly I have culled, as I have better ways of contacting them. The names I don’t recognize are gone. It’s like being in a dream… this weird hodge-podge of “don’t I know you from somewhere?” and “you look so familiar” and “I feel like we went to the same event one time, and had an amazing conversation over beers after.”