Over 600,000 Brits disappeared from Facebook in December but were you a proper mug to have joined the social network in the first place?
With nigh on 700 million users worldwide, it was once estimated that if every member of Facebook were to belong to one country, then it would be the third biggest in the world.
How lovely! Imagine for a minute, if you dare, the mind numbing horror and brute banality of an island inhabited with nothing but Facebook users. The hellish reality of hordes of Mark Zuckerberg's little pawns all desperately vying for attention and 'poking' one another senseless in a bid to have the coolest friends, funkiest status, wackiest profile picture and most up to date baby scan picture, would be enough to make Satan himself turn his big red scaly back and say, 'That's enough!'
Left to their own devices and without the condemnation of more civilised and refined souls to restrain their base arguments and pointless pontifications, these egotistical and squabbling little beasts would make Lord of the Flies seem like a Walt Disney film quicker than you can say 'I'm a real person get me outta here'.
Thankfully, and it's been a long time coming, more and more people are cottoning onto the fact that Facebook is a billion dollar business which views its users as little more than products! It's not place to share, it's a place to shun.
Of course, it has been a testing time for anyone who managed to swim against the tide and avoid Facebook like the plague as it slowly and stealthily attempted to posses the world's soul and turn us all into drivelling cyber people consumed by envy and obsessed with spying on people we have never met.
During the social network wars how many of us weary 'survivors' have looked on with regret and a contemptuous shake of the head as both family and friends were infected by the deadly virus and fell like dominos in the face of the overwhelming peer pressure to 'get connected'.
As Mark Zuckerberg's evil cackle echoed endlessly around the internet, people without a Facebook account were viewed with suspicion by the millions who were enjoying all the benefits of having an intimate and loving relationship with a computer programme.
Even by their nearest and dearest, non users were considered untrustworthy deviants who had no friends and had nothing to say. "Why aren't you on Facebook?" Users would snarl in complete disbelief, sprinkled liberally with just the slightest hint of moral outrage.
The 'possessed' as I like to call them, soon began to lose all sense of human dignity. Core values such as personal privacy, modesty and a healthy distrust of strangers were thrown out of the window as a bloody and merciless battle, to be the most popular, witty and liked, prevailed. The rest of us watched on with unspeakable sorrow as the afflicted became annoyingly self-centred and obsessed with sharing updates of their life with an uncaring world.
If you didn't play the game and join their gang your were soon considered something of a pitiful leper as millions of Facebook users reverted to the archetype of the playground bully and seemed to adopt the stance of, "If you're not with us, you're against us."
Amongst the ranks of the 'possessed' however there was no social harmony or cyber utopia to be found. Smear campaigns were commonplace, and much discord and strife which was sown on Facebook spilled over into the real world with disastrous consequences. The social network had in many ways started to resemble a particularly vile episode of the Jeremy Kyle show without any advert breaks.
Many of us 'survivors' tried to help those caught in the throes of this terrible addiction with rational arguments along the lines of "If I want to speak to a friend I pay them a visit or pick up the phone, and "If I want to share photos I use email, not stick them up in the internet's equivalent of a pub toilet."
Sadly are pleas for liberation fell on deaf ears, because people who lived in small British villages wanted to have long distance relationships with their 'friends' in San Francisco and the daily dose of gossip and vicarious existence which Facebook provided was too good to give up on.
The stark truth of the matter was that people had hundreds of friends but no-one with whom to pass the long and unforgiving hours of an actual day with.
And then from out of the darkness there came hope - much like a beautifully crafted letter from another era. The privacy issues which Facebook has struggled with for so long were beginning to shake a lot of the 'possessed' out of their apathetic stupor and willful slumber.
People begin to ask, "Who exactly can see my profile and who actually owns all the pictures I post?" And there were even more rumours that Facebook had been selling personality profiles of users to any company willing to pay for the information. People began to feel that Facebook was forcing unacceptable conditions upon them and slowly in dribs and drabs they began to leave the social network giant like rats deserting a sinking ship.
Their recovery will no doubt take time and some may relapse, but as they emerge from their cyber holes like prisoners who have been kept in solitary confinement for an inhumanly long time, these former Facebook users are to both pitied and helped as they stumble, blinking and confused, into a new dawn and take their first few tentative steps on the long, hard road to freedom.
And for those of you who are still 'possessed', you are not alone, we will pray for you.
