I deactivated my Facebook account.

I know. Social media suicide.

There was a time when I could not imagine what I would do if I lost everything on Facebook. All of my friendly banter back and forth between my camp girls, the amazing Kanye videos friends posted to my Wall, my Bookshelf, the awesome quotes I found for my About Me, that funny group I created when my car got stolen and all I cared about was losing my blue silk dress from Banana Republic and how everyone joined in support posting “I’m so sorry”s and “Here’s to the lost dress!”s. That time like 30 people posted on my status when I wrote “My Cockroach Killing is Strong!”

I contemplated many of these things when I hit that button that would wipe my existence forever from the social media sphere. Or at least until the next time I decided to login again.

What’s probably even worse, is that I work in digital and social media marketing. So I kinda have to be on Facebook and all the social channels to know what’s going on, so that I can make informed decisions about my company’s brands.

I’m a little nervous about friends in the business finding out I’ve disappeared into a cyberspace black hole.

But here’s why I did it.

1. Because all my other friends are doing it (I know. Same excuse as the time I drank vodka out of a water bottle in first period.)

2. Because I’m sick of hyper-targeted, direct marketing (No, Google, I don’t want you in my wallet, and I don’t want you on my phone dictating my consumer behaviors to me. I just want to eat a damn hot dog when I feel like it; not when you say they’re 50% off.)

3. Because I’m sick of hyper-active consumerism (No, I don’t need to consume that much useless data, every day, all day long, I don’t need a plastic bag for that one thing I bought at the drug store and I don’t need chopsticks every time I get take out sushi.)

In a city with 9 million people in it, it’s blatantly obvious the impact I have on my environment just by living in it. So I’m trying not to impact it in a way that is outwardly harmful.

I eat everything from grocery bought and homemade meals. I carry my groceries home in a reusable bag. I only buy as much as I can carry, walking 20 blocks to and from the store. I don’t take a taxi and I don’t take public transportation.

I walk to and from work (30 blocks and 4 avenues each way) every day.

I compost my green waste in a cute little white bucket on my fire escape and use the tomatoes and basil from my fire escape garden for meals.

I sound like one of those tree-hugging, California hippies, right? Well, I am.

I recently read an article in New York Magazine about the Hipster. See, contrary to popular belief, the Hipster didn’t surface in the underground in the early 2000′s like everyone thought. The Hipster is actually the predecessor to the Hippie. Back in the 50′s the Hipster was this cool, anti-consumer with Thoreau airs and a back-to-the-land attitude. The Hipster stood for taking care of the earth, Pocahontas-style, and wanted to put the brakes on the mass industrialization that threatened to destroy the human value in our products. The Hippie is actually the derogatory nickname pop culture dubbed the free-loving, tree-hugging Hipsters.

When the Hipsters resurfaced in 1999, with their greasy hair and grungy music, they lost their map to Fern Gully and traded it in for florescent sunglasses circa 1980 and tee shirts that boasted next Sunday’s church potluck theme. They were back-to-the-suburb-ers, for cool’s sake, not for the suburb’s. They were back to the Walkman, but not because they despised the mass production of the iPod, but because no one else was doing it. And it seemed cool.

Single-handedly, the Hipster retroactively brought back consumerism like it was 1969. The Hipster went on the hunt for the next cool thing. And the next one. And the next one. And the next one. And the next one.

And that’s why I hate Facebook. Because all the cool kids said I should join it and they said they thought it was cool. Then the cool companies got on there and told all their cool company friends to get on there and then everyone was on there. And then everyone had two, three, four Facebook accounts and posted 642 (meaningless) posts a day, which aggregated to the Top 350 Trending threads, which I checked every morning when I got up and the last thing I did before I went to sleep.

And I just wondered why. Why am I consuming this social data just to consume it? What value is it adding to my life? Can I interact with my friends any place other than Facebook? What would I do all day long if I weren’t posting pictures of my latest painting or what I cooked for dinner?

Well, I suppose I would spend more time in my fire escape garden. And probably clean my apartment. And maybe talk to my roommate. And call my parents more often. And think about that woman I pass every day on the way to work who wears a white, over-sized men’s tee shirt that she has pulled over her knees while she’s looking down at the ground and I’m trying not to read the scribbled handwriting on her weathered cardboard plea.

And I suppose if I spent less time on Facebook, I’d figure out a way I could help her out that would be more meaningful than leaving her my pocket change every morning.

And that is why I committed social media suicide.

P.S. Check out these mad caterpillars that over took my garden this morning! Had to pick’em off one by one before they demolished my tomatoes! (They’re the little fury things you see all over the place.)