hey i'm back from my social experiment! actually it's ended long ago but i'm too lazy to post anything. i first wrote this in fb and i'm only copying it over. HEH.

i would say that my experiment was 90% successful.

facebook - i didnt access my own account at all. my friend showed me something off her fb account and that's it.
twitter - ehhhh probably the least successful. i did abstain for a full week. then i went to tweet at bobbyt, went back the next day to check whether he replied me (which he thankfully did) and i resisted looking through the timeline. i had to research on my presentation on twitter, so i HAD to go find some tweets as examples. EXCUSED! :D
youtube - equally fail. cause my friends showed me youtube videos. and i had to watch some more for my research. but i didnt watch stupid video/music videos off the youtube net. so.....i dont know if that counts.
skype/blogger/tumblr - total success.

ok, so here i am to share with you my experience so that you dont have to go through the facebook rehab.

i was still on fb/twitter on 13feb and as the deadline drew near, i panicked and tried to tweet at as many people as possible and leave comments on fb. i left at 2359. when i woke up the next morning, i immediately felt the effects. usually, i'll head straight to switch on my wifi, load my fb pages and tweets so i can read them while having breakfast. that monday, i didnt. i left home much earlier and realised that i could probably wake up a lil later since i dont have to spend time reading those things anymore.

perks #1: more sleep.

the withdrawal is really getting to me. i constantly itch of visiting the sites but i know i have to keep up to my word. i closed the apps from my iTouch and removed my skype/twitter/msn icon from my mac dock to help me with it. if i dont see it, i wont think of it right? then, (this probably happens to all twitter addicts) i started to think in tweets. everything i see, a tweet forms in my head. it was crazy. i want to tweet but i cant. so, i wrote down a list of the tweets that surfaced in my head. that helped. so technically, i'm tweeting in my diary. not too bad!

after the first couple of days, i overcome the threshold. i no longer felt the urge to head into those sites. thinking back, i dont know why i spend so much time there. newsfeed is the problem. i always want to read everything. that's the same thing as my twitter feed. i always feel that i'll miss out some things if i dont read 'em all. bad habit.

i have to say that the most awesome thing from this experiment is the productivity. checking mail is now really just checking mail. no more hanging around facebook or twitter to see who said what. once i've checked my mails, i can move on to real work, much faster than before.

perk #2: productivity up

but then again, because you dont read your friend's feeds, you have no idea what's going on. we're living the physical world but there's another world in the www. the whole time that i'm away, i've got no idea what's happening there, what are they talking about, what are the upcoming events. there are just some things that people dont talk about in real life. it's like a mutual online understanding. when people online ask whether you're going for this event, you dont ask again in real life. that's the part i'm missing out on.

boo #1: not being updated

i realise that i'm probably one of the weird people you know, who would put myself through such a thing voluntarily. my friends didnt think it was possible, knowing how much i love to tweet. i thought it was gonna be difficult too and it was. for those who believed in my willpower, i thank you.
it's not possible to get people off the social media because that's our social life. today, meeting real people and socialising is not the norm. meeting people and socialising on the net is the norm. people get so tired from work and school, who's got the time lest energy to go meet people? lazy by nature, we like to sit at our desks, at the comfort of our own home and chillax while we surf and check out strangers' profiles.
admit it. we all do.

coming back, yesterday night i was feeling nervous about going back to the social mediums. dont ask me why. i dont know either. i clicked on my fb bookmark, visited a couple of places, my friend came to talk to me and i was already bored. i didnt even bother looking through the newsfeed, only a couple on the top.

with this, i know i've succeeded. i know i can live without fb/twitter and other things if one day it decides to shut down.

AND IF YOU'RE EVER INTERESTED, i included the tweets that went through my head:

- I hate you I hate you I hate you
- Damn I miss twitter :(
- OMG @ladygaga came in an egg costume
- I dont exactly like #bornthisway actually. Sorry @ladygaga
- I feel like I'm tweeting in my mind, keeping my thoughts/sentences to 140 charac
- Seriously, not visiting fb/twitter makes my Internet trip so fast. I'm done with emails in 10mins max
- And I'm talking about both personal & school email. #socialmediaisawasteoftime
- Dear John :)
- Pixie lott sings about s'poreans: "and you're sitting in the front row, wanna be 1st in line"
- CLASS PART. annoying piece of shit
- I'm gonna class part every single lesson. That's it man
- Economics students dont talk much. At least for me.
- If Twitter were my class, my class part sure A+. @fakesmu
- I miss you. again. :( :'( is more apt.
- Saw Darren! :D
- BGS. YAWNS. :O
- Friday shopping plans abandoned. AS HW time + Red Cross write-up. All within 3hrs. EFFICIENCY TIME!
- @unexplainedjoy thinks it's funny that i write down my tweets. in twitter language.
- I can stay up all night facebooking/twittering/skyping but I cant do the same for studying. D:
- I dont know, but it feels to me that he too is genuinely happy while talking/skyping to me
- Did the captain of the Titanic cry?
- I have 38 items in my inbox (most of them are in folders) and 967 items in my trash. NICE.
- I miss you Mart
- Urgh. Fucking hostile.
- Forgoing Olympics for Wimbledon? 99% yes
- RFed: "Okay, concentrate, please."
- 3.5 more hours to go back to fb/twitter. feeling nervous now dont know why!
- I've got a mixed feeling when i see your name in my mailbox
- TRYING to churn out a report. At least a draft Peiyi!
to God be the glory, the Best is yet to be. ♥
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