Within a week I will be leaving Facebook. But I wish to grant you all the special privilege of scouring my timeline and photos one last time before the exit is official. PSYCHE!!! Actually I just want to make sure everyone receives this final transmission. Facebook has grown far too large and grotesque for anyone’s good, and its present IPO sham seems the perfect time to escape the asylum.

"Please don't go!"

I joined the site for the same reason that most of us did—the chance to connect with long-lost friends of yore. And in that capacity, Facebook has succeeded. We’re all riding this roller-coaster called Life with varying degrees of success and enjoyment, and it was nice to catch up. But now that we’ve all bonded accordingly, we have a couple of choices: continue this lethargic cycle of supporting a corporate monstrosity whose Monopoly money revenue model is based on following us around the internet forevermore, or simply download our data and sign off one last time, content with what has already been accomplished.

Furthermore, we no longer need Facebook to keep in touch. The internet is now fully entrenched in this phase of our civilization, so I will be easy enough to find here at Bradezone and BZT (and I guess Twitter too, at least until their own inevitable IPO circus). I leave you with this one piece of practical advice: if you have not yet installed an ad blocker in your browser, I highly encourage you to do so. No company should be valued in the billions simply because we don’t properly ignore their vapid attempts to sell us something.

Oh, and in a related move that will affect absolutely no one, I’m also canceling Google+.