Facebook used to be AMAZING! It gave me a way to turn my art into a business! My posts used to reach thousands and thousands of people. I used to spend 3-4 hours a day just replying to messages and comments, building relationships, connecting with people all over the world.
Then, bit by bit, it took all that away. First my business page lost 99% of it's reach, then my group. I even got blocked from posting and replying to comments in my own group. And now, even my personal page only reaches maybe 1% of my friends & followers. I made my living from selling my art online, at one point 95% of my sales were from Facebook, my website got 3-5000 hits a week from FB. Now I'm lucky if my posts reach 100 people and I get a handful of hits to my website each week...
Worse, people think you;re ignoring them, and you think they're ignoring you, but really it's Facebook not sharing/showing posts. I can't even communicate properly with my own family. Last week, an important message from my own Dad, who I am friends with on Facebook, and do follow, got put into my "filtered" inbox so I never got a notification about it and only saw it 2 days later. Meanwhile, my Dad thinks I'm ignoring his important message...
Stress, depression, anger, powerlessness, frustration are the result. I literally get cravings and withdrawls, just like a substance. Worse even because in my head I know I didn't take anything, so I get mad at myself - why should I be feeling like this? Snap out of it! "Just stop using Facebook so much", "Only log in once a day" But I can't, I'm addicted... Even other people in recovery from drugs and alcohol, people who are familiar with these symptoms, act like I'm overreacting when I tell them this.
And I am probably going to have to stop doing art full time until I can find other ways to reach people, Steemit, Minds and local events just aren't filling in the gap enough yet, which makes me resent Facebook even more... It'll be hard to find new ways to reach people while I'm busy working for someone else again. I just deactivated my Facebook account today, but I found out it's pretty much the same as just logging out, you can just log back in any time. I think I'll have to delete it completely to finally get rid of this horrible time wasting and soul sucking addiction.
One Facebook post is too many, and a thousand is not enough...