Getting off Facebook

Welcome to my blog!

I finally bit the bullet, and decided to get off Facebook.

I weighed up the pros and cons, and in the end, the cons weighed heavier.

Despite being about ‘getting people together’, I think that in the end, Facebook is more about splitting people apart than about getting people together.

I’ve seen former friends become really angry at one another and never talk to each other again because Facebook is fanning the flames of discord. I cannot help but think of ‘Radio Mille Collines’.

Staying in touch with family and friends and things like community groups on Facebook serve a purpose, but that’s not enough to turn a blind eye to the harmful side of Facebook.

So, instead of Facebook, I’ll be here, on this blog!

I am also still on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/zwettemaan

If you’re so inclined, you can send me a friend request – by default, no personal pictures are shown, but friends and family can see personal pictures too.

On Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/kriscoppieters

On Twitter:

https://twitter.com/zwettemaan
https://twitter.com/k_coppieters

You can also leave comments on this blog, or email me at

kris <AT> coppieters.nz

However, I want to share you the story why I have a beard.

When I started to develop my first wispy hairs on my chin, I decided that I was never going to shave. Assuming a man needs 5 minutes each day to shave, and assuming I was going to live to 72, I was going to save (72 – 17) * 365.25 * 5 = 100443.75 minutes = 70 days of my life.

The story has a sad ending: I think I wasted all my gains on social media 🙁

So, come back occasionally. My blog will mostly be terribly boring, but there might be some interesting nuggets here and there.

Final word: I would like to ask everyone who read this far to try and avoid using the word ‘they’, or at least, be aware of it when you’re using it.

You’ll notice lately there is a steep incline in its usage: ‘They do this’, ‘They all believe that’,… and invariably it’s an indication of stereotyping.

If you hear yourself say ‘They’… stop and think!

Try to put some names to the ‘they’. If you cannot put forward any people’s names, but instead your mind’s eye comes up with a faceless stereotype image of ‘a person’, question yourself.

5 thoughts on “Getting off Facebook”

  1. The difference between Facebook and your blog is that we’re all looking at FB regularly and we’re not looking at your blog regularly. So you either need some method of letting people subscribe to your blog (so we’re notified when you post), or have some kind of auto-poster-to-FB.

    1. P.S. I’ve opened up the ‘subscribe’ function to this blog as an experiment. The fear I have is that it might attract uninterested overseas subscribers intent on selling all kinds of interesting stuff via comments. I’ll let it sit for a while to see what happens… I also found the email notification was not working yet (hence the long time before I saw the comments). Fixed that. And I’ve got a certificate installed now; will move things over to https://coppieters.nz

    1. When I was still teaching, my nickname was ‘The Gnome’ (‘t Kabouterken, actually). I have that information from a reliable source, a certain ex-student of mine 😉

Comments are closed.