I forgot how much more I like dialog in this setting than I do on facebook. 
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I am still on facebook, but wish there was more activity here, I think I like this better, I started in the days when forums were how we meet and communicated online… not facebook, or even myspace that much. I stay on facebook to communicate with a few friends, but am trying to get their e-mails… then I will go off except for posting to my 2 pages. Lived without it most of the time for 2 years except library use. Can again.
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Funny timing coming across this right now. Last night when I opened up Facebook this popped out and made me literally lol:
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I’m about in the same place you are @ladyfoxfeather. I left internet, tv and phones completely almost 3 years ago and did enjoy it but missed connections to people. Ive been back on for a few months and have reconnected to some and made new friends but the noise especially from FB is too much. If I had a physical tribe close I don’t think I would be on at all but I do like forums like this one better.
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One thing I keep thinking about with the internet in general is “Context.” Things are taken out of context. How can you say anything of substance in a bite size twitter post or facebook update? Context is everything. Especially when dealing with abstract, hard to understand or articulate issues. This is why books are a thing. Because you have to set up the context for a discussion. The internet assumes context very often. But the problem is that the internet has no context, or it is all contexts at once. This is why it both connects and divides people. It is everything and nothing. AaaahHH!!!
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We’ve lost the knowledge and know how to communicate. All the drama and bickering (rewilding groups included) most likely wouldn’t be happening like it is if it were in person. I enjoy the connections I’ve made online and have developed some amazing friendships but I long for that real in-person relationships with others that are heading down a similar path.
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I’m also highly considering deleting my Facebook page for good… however, actually joining this group on FB is one of my main reasons not to. Are things frequently bumped over here from the FB group enough to compensate for losing that connection?
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There is only one way to make that happen.
Get a group of folks who’d like to maintain their FB presence to agree to bump posts from that group into a designated thread on rewild.com?
or
Hire an anarchist-based cyber group to shut down FB completely once and for all, thereby moving all traffic to this site by default?
Both sound viable to me…
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i’m off facebook! left my profile up with contact info (ditto for my ‘pages’), but will be staying away for the foreseeable future. will be much more active here & on the feralculture forums intsead. 
i also set up an rss feed program in lieu of my timeline, since i did have awesome stuff popping up on there from some of the folks i’d followed. so now i’ve got a non-fb source for the types of things i Want to see popping up in my browser. would love to see some kind of ‘interesting recent articles’ thread here to foster active discussion of current rewilding-related topics. has anything like that been done here already?
thanks for the inspiration, @PeterMichaelBauer - it helps a lot knowing there’s a good handful of other people migrating over to similar watering holes at the same time.
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I have been off facebook for over a year and half. With it gone…oddly life is less stressful
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Well done, Joan! I’m cleaning out my social media to permanently delete the different accounts… I’m curious though, because there is some information I want to keep updated on primarily from teachers, if you can share more about the RSS feed program? Not familiar with that sort of software
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@pupilseekingteacher it’s not even a program, technically - or at least it’s built into a web site, so it’s not something you have to download. i’m using feedly, but there are a variety of free rss feed sites available. i made an account, and then started adding blogs & sites i wanted updates from.
a few sites that i wanted to follow don’t have rss enabled for their content, or the way the site is managed it’s not technically a ‘feed’ sort of deal (for example, iaminuit.com presents its posts/articles as an image gallery). but for the most part, it’s a convenient way to grab content from specific sites, authors, and categories of interest. then i can sort it however i like - normal news, rewilding related, health, whatever.
so now my feedly page is set as the home page on my browser, & will show me what’s new when i open a new browser window. you can bookmark articles for later, create ‘boards’ to share with others (vaguely similar to pinterest, i think), and filter out certain topics by keyword if you don’t want to fall into particular rabbit-holes.
anyone else have more experience or insight on using rss for things? i used it for a short bit way back when Everything went into one feed reader by default. then google, blogger, yahoo, etc all started separating ‘their’ content so you had to use multiple ‘readers’ to see everything. would love to hear from folks who use rss effectively & what your preferences & tweaks are to make it work for you.
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I just logged off, semi-permanent from Facebook, for the foreseeable future. I hope we can grow this group more, and make it very lively!
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One thing I have done for a couple of years to stay up to date on rewilding related news it Google Alerts. I have multiple buzzwords tagged so that google will send me a daily or weekly update with all the news articles that use those words. Obviously “Rewilding” is one of them. I would say that 95% of those articles are about wildlife conservation rewilding in the UK. I also have things like “paleoanthrology” “traditional ecological knowledge” “hunter-gather” things like that. I noticed that most of the time I would see articles start trending on facebook about a week or so after they got to my inbox.
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I second’s @joan’s suggestion to use RSS. There’s a new thing called json feed that is supposed to make this easier for content authors and reeder applications to integrate but it’s the same idea and it remains to be seen if it’s going to reverse the downward trend of RSS.
Most of the time though, people blogging and writing content use a platform that includes a RSS feed by default so it’s often as easy as adding a website to your RSS reader which will automatically find the feed URL and include it. I use RSS for all “news/content” and I just have a bunch of categories so that I can ignore some things when I’m not in the mood for them. Sometimes I send articles to Instapaper when it’s longer reads that I might want to read when I’m offline. I’ll also “star” my favorites when I read something I’ll likely want to refer to later.
One thing with RSS though is that you have to actively seek out new sources. Some might find the fact that new sources/ideas aren’t as easily discoverable to be a problem but since we tend to be more receptive to new ideas when we’re ready for them, I think it might work out okay in practice to require some effort on our part to seek out new sources.
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those of you who are off facebook, what else do you do in terms of daily connection online? just rss feeds? any places other than this forum where you find good conversation around similar topics?
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I have been using Facebook, and my view is that it scatters me in my use of Facebook. I mean I come to reach others in common purposes. But there aren’t any I am finding that are exactly there to respond in the common purposes for communicating for any pursuits. Rewilders I think come closest, but still there are specific things I mean for it, and try with different groups and a variety of Facebook friends who could see what I post. And what specifically do I mean, that rewilders only come closest to? Sustainability is essential, and it calls for actually separating from civilization, as I am saying, in this life, to be apart from that and independent of it. Others who would join for a cohesive group doing this is desirable for a lasting presence for that. But I say it would really need to be sustainable, as far as possible, with the greatest changes for it. It will be then with using what the environment can support us with, so it would necessarily require great change to simplicity, and using what would be for the most sustainable way for living in this world with its environments around us.
Facebook scatters my communication to different people and groups that could come close to any of that possible, but I am not connecting with others for that still. Here in this forum site communication may be more focused for that.
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I’m so inspired by you guys quitting Facebook that I’m thinking I should sign up for it just so that I can give it up. I have a wife that has Facebook and for the life of me I cannot understand why anybody would want to have their lives bogged down by all of that.
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i’ve been 95% off facebook since the new year, and am having very little issue with it. have only been on there to ‘shop’ for bits of furniture on local sales groups once every few weeks. and i can do that offline, at the thrift stores, or by word of mouth. SO… i’m done.
i’ve left two abusive relationships in my life (plus fought tooth & nail for a few years to help my mom leave my dad), and this feels mildly similar. i’ve tried to leave several times (starting in 2012, when i had already been homesteading and mostly offline for several years), worried about the hurt i would cause by doing so, worried about leaving a positive legacy, etc. anxious about what i’d be missing out on, wondered whether it was worth it to leave. i’m done now.
first try:
second try:
third time’s the charm:
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