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I think that is the dilemma. Facebook for many is a means of interacting with a past that they need for validation, or in some cases they need to be nosey. Asking people to leave something that so thoroughly allows people to disappear into nothingness for hours, is like asking a crackhead to put the pipe down. I think Troy is attempting to create a movement amongst writers. Not necessarily getting people to leave altogether. I used to get a nice little check from Google. I don't have half of the traffic I used to and for my sneaker company, the "friends" I have on Facebook have literally ignored my Kickstarter which is really what pushed me over the edge with this. Since most Kickstarters get their biggest push from those in your immediate circle. I admit I've never really promoted my writing, but the easiest thing for me to do is remove my author's page and create a social network for anyone interested in interacting with me (which is a very small circle). I think if any person awakens to the fact that ad revenue and blogs are slowly dying, then Troy has opened eyes and I have given people a better understanding of how important it is to visit websites, not just Facebook. I think the thing that is going to have to occur to help get people away from Facebook is a list. People are going to have to begin sharing more websites on their walls. I think someone needs to create a meme , since they are passed around faster than anything else in social media. That meme should basically tell people to choose 5 websites a day and favorite those sites and visit those sites to check for updates daily. This will reinvent browsing which is actually dying. People no longer search the web for information, they simply click targets away from Facebook and FB stays open behind whatever page they open waiting on them to come back.

This devil's advocate is curious. What do you 2 offer as an alternative to the millions of everyday people with humdrum lives for whom FaceBook offers a place to go and interact on many levels with other people with humdrum lives? FaceBook is after all, a self-declared social media, just like online dating and porn are. In the real world, what threat is posed to the freedom of the individuals who go to these sites by choice? Nothing in this existence is without risk. Life is an obstacle course and people have to use discretion, but it is their prerogative to pick their own poison and this includes immersing themselves in the cyber community. Manipulation by the corporate world is everywhere. Amazon and Google are typical. Just recently women have been advised about how the Fashion industry lies when tagging garments so that vain gullible females will think they're fitting into sizes smaller than they really are. Look at the diet industry and the cosmetic one, both examples of the things that are being shoved down our throats with false promises and deceptive practices in an ongoing quest to make our "avatars" more appealing. We are a nation that wallows in superficiality. Why you want to "unfriend" FaceBook is understandable for your purposes, however, when you elect to tell people what they should not do with their free time, you, yourselves, are asking them to defer to your dictates. Yes, invasion of privacy is an issue, but it's nothing new, and it all boils down to what everybody knows about everybody else. We are all in the public domain, including those doing the snooping, not to mention the POTUS, himself. I am not a big fan of FaceBook, but I still go there to be amused because I am a people watcher. I also appreciate being able to hear about my hometown acquaintances many of whom are droppin like flies and whose families post their obituaries there. What I am also not a big fan of is the glut of self-published books unleashed by a multitude of wanna-bes looking for venues to plug the trite, mundane, poorly-edited, barely-proof read books they are offering for sale. But, that's just me. And you know me...

Satire is a very keen blade in an arena where the pen can be mightier than the sword.