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- Oct 20, 2024
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Just to be clear: I think that anyone should be able to leave whatever site or service they use, for whatever reason, and have it done quickly and efficiently, no strings attached. And that any and all that don't provide a clean exit are shady at best, downright assholic at worst.
That said, nuking your entire account didn't use to be normal, at least on the sites I used for the vast majority of my online experience (forums, fan sites, small, proto social media outlets...) and I remember reading an article saying that this function being added to the (then) latest update to a juggernaut like RetroJunk.com was what caused its eventual downfall, with people who had been there for years and through hundreds --if not thousands-- of messages deleting their entire existences after a moment of weakness, leaving the whole thing feeling like an empty shell.
As overdramatic as that sounds, it's probably accurate... And also something I keep seeing over and over whenever I'm late to the party somewhere and the dreaded "Deleted User/System/Guest/Cancelled" message greets me in pretty much every conversation, sometimes multiple times in a row, the real identify of whoever had left those messages only visible on leftover posts and mentions that had originally quoted them.
That got me thinking... And it all boils down to a single, burning question: "Why?".
Why would someone choose to delete their entire account instead of simply abandoning it? Why would they weld the door shut after spending months (or even years) carving out a name for themselves somewhere? I can understand it in a lot of cases, actually, but my experience seems to indicate that most people bail out of boredom or inactivity rather than because of having a deal-breaking scenario with whatever place they are trying to leave from.
What do y'all think?
That said, nuking your entire account didn't use to be normal, at least on the sites I used for the vast majority of my online experience (forums, fan sites, small, proto social media outlets...) and I remember reading an article saying that this function being added to the (then) latest update to a juggernaut like RetroJunk.com was what caused its eventual downfall, with people who had been there for years and through hundreds --if not thousands-- of messages deleting their entire existences after a moment of weakness, leaving the whole thing feeling like an empty shell.
As overdramatic as that sounds, it's probably accurate... And also something I keep seeing over and over whenever I'm late to the party somewhere and the dreaded "Deleted User/System/Guest/Cancelled" message greets me in pretty much every conversation, sometimes multiple times in a row, the real identify of whoever had left those messages only visible on leftover posts and mentions that had originally quoted them.
That got me thinking... And it all boils down to a single, burning question: "Why?".
Why would someone choose to delete their entire account instead of simply abandoning it? Why would they weld the door shut after spending months (or even years) carving out a name for themselves somewhere? I can understand it in a lot of cases, actually, but my experience seems to indicate that most people bail out of boredom or inactivity rather than because of having a deal-breaking scenario with whatever place they are trying to leave from.
What do y'all think?
