Every Greek member goes through recruitment week. Sororities refer to it as “Hell Week” considering we girl-flirt and dress up every day for hours on end.
For us social media whores, the hell part comes with deactivating our Facebook accounts, at least for UCSB sorority girls. We also deactivate Twitter and cannot post/like anything on Instagram. Why you ask? The truth is, I have no freaking clue. However, I realized numerous repercussions for the deactivation of my Facebook and it shocked me how random they were.
1. You won’t get your daily bonus spin on Candy Crush. For those avid Candy Crush players, we look forward to getting the bonus daily spin prize and for 2 weeks I suffered in torture every time I tried to get one. The only way to get the spins is by linking your FB account to it. I contemplated reactivating it just to get the spins, but realized that this addiction could cost my sorority a fat fine.
2. You can’t locate local singles using Tinder. Tinder is seen as predominately a hook up site for most people in college. However, the entertainment purpose of Tinder is what I value. After my friend read me hysterical pick-up lines her matches came up with, I had to go on in hopes of being so lucky. Oh wait, Tinder only works with Facebook. Fail.
3. You can’t look at the best FB statuses. We all have those high school acquaintances or maybe even friends at some point in our lives that we are still have as our FB friends. This category of people, that I am referencing are the one’s who post insane/idiotic posts and that is the sole reason why we keep them as friends. One, these posts make us laugh at them and two, these posts boost our egos by reminding us we are actually well-educated, socially acceptable people.
4. You have to go to favorite websites to read articles/watch videos. I always clicked on FB posts with the links to Buzzfeed, Huffington post, The Onion, etc. to find videos/articles to view. I realized that these websites actually exist without having to go through the Facebook portal to get them. Who knew?
5. You have to actually focus to your monotone professor in class. Now I will admit, I was slightly disgusted at the fact how often I get on Facebook during class considering I clicked on my FB tab about half a dozen times during an hour and fifteen minute lecture. However, it was syllabus day and the professor reading off the entire syllabus was a waste of my time.
6. You can’t Facebook stalk people you hear gossip about. Wait, she’s pregnant? Exactly! Those non-Greek friends we have so few of get the gossip before we do. And when we can’t Facebook stalk to confirm our beloved rumors annoys us. And more so, rumors that could have been put to rest may continue, wasting even more of our time.
7. Reactivating it is so easy that deactivating it is just a waste of time. All you have to do is click log in for those who have their FB username/passwords saved on our computers. Not to mention we have to given Facebook a reason for deactivating…and we thought Facebook couldn’t infringe on more of our privacy.
8. Your mother thinks you unfriended her/blocked her and is now pissed at you. Yep, my mother was genuinely disappointed and called me. Although the reasoning why she couldn’t tag me in an album of embarrassing middle school photos was soon relayed, I still feel guilty for making her think I blocked her…which I think I should, but that’s for another article.
9. You can’t boast about yourself to your acquaintances without breaking social norms. If you got a new internship, received an award/certification, or whatever the case may be, I don’t get to share it with all the people I’m Facebook friends with. Even though I never talk to half of them, I still want my greatest to shine. We all do.
10. Remaining clueless to the vast amount of information FB gives us. At least for Greek members, groups and events are sent through FB for mixers, parties, philanthropies, fundraisers, etc. My sorority has quite a few groups which people post actually useful things such as job opportunities, discounts, and important information.