A Diary Called Facebook | Borislavkiprin.com

In the last few months, I realised my personal diary was, to some extent, Facebook. In a few months, it will be a decade that I am present there.

This year, I have undertaken the Sisyphean task to clean up the content I have published there. But no matter how much I am removing more and more are popping up. I am not talking about the reactions or comments I have left on someone else’s wall. Purely the stuff I have published – thoughts, photos, infographics, check-ins etc.

I started with the oldest ones and moving upward, I found myself flipping through pictures of people who are no longer among us, and personal beliefs don’t share anymore. Things I certainly regard as unsuitable for my wall. But most of it is third-party posts and news I have shared – tons of them.

Some of my posts make me laugh, others bring me to tears. I see my past screening in front of my eyes like an old school film roll. And I am having these mist feelings about it.

When I was a kid, the computer was for playing games and learning basic commands. There were no smartphones, social networks or pretty much anything, but books. To socialise, we were meeting after school or passing around this notebook called Lexicon, where questions were asked, and everyone in the class was answering them with a single word. Stuff like “What’s your favourite band?” “Colour?” or “Who do you like?”

For many of us, it is completely normal to share even intimate feelings online with complete strangers. And at some point, you have shared so much that there is hardly a way back. Pretty much like me now.

I’ve just spent three hours today cleaning up 2010 and 2011 of my content on Facebook. Once I have finished, I accidentally hit the refresh button, and it turned out there is double the amount I have already removed. Adding to this, I have been going to Memories every morning for the past half-year and deleting everything the algorithm shows me. And it never ends.

I am not sure if I will be free of published content on y timeline any time soon. But my diary on Facebook has to go. I have no illusions about Facebook keeping a stash of my postings somewhere for a rainy day, but I no longer want to see so much stuff there.

Not exactly the diary I have ever imagined to have.

Photo credit: Pablo by Buffer