Eva Bradley: Going cold turkey a virtual non event

It was way back in the 18th century that the theory of black holes in space was first formulated. The notion that a mass so dense could be formed that it sucked in everything in its path, including light, was a terrifying one. It has always been a great comfort to me to know that these black holes existed only in remote corners of the galaxy and in locales where I was rather unlikely to be found lurking.
Then along came Facebook. The black hole of the modern age, it sucks in mass as surely as anything to be found in the Milky Way, and if you are one of the unlucky sods to get too close to the event horizon (the theoretical point of no return) then there is nothing to be done but wave a limp goodbye to friends in the non-virtual world and slip silently into the permanent darkness of cyberspace.
At its inception, Facebook seemed harmless enough. A few unsolicited virtual pokes here and there and the occasional dubious friend request from someone on the fringe of your real-life social set were about the biggest hurdles one had to contend with. Logging in once every few days simply so one could be seen to be engaging in the increasingly fashionable online world was a quick and easy process that had very little impact on real-world activities. But now, with 1200 friends and followers spread across both personal and business pages, I have created a social network so vast that even I can't follow it. Not content with sharing the intimacies of my personal life via a nationally syndicated column, I have gone one step further and laid my life bare online in a way that, even if I do say so myself, is overwhelmingly geeky.
Prior to the advent of iPhone and Facebook apps, this addiction with informing people of the banal happenings of my life was limited to business hours when I was at my studio in a professional state of mind and diverted by real-world activities such as work. Now, of course, I have Facebook on my phone and like an insidious noxious weed it has infiltrated my life to the point that the only thing stopping me checking for updates at the traffic lights is the law.
The consequences of being able to update one's status after midnight and far too many alcoholic beverages doesn't even bear thinking about. Life was complicated enough when I only had to worry about the things said under the influence to the person helping prop up the bar. Now I have to consider what an excess of 1000 others online thought about the update that seemed full of wit and sass at the time but in the sober light of day was devastatingly lame.
I am well known for poor communication with good friends in the real world, so why have I become so obsessed with following the tedious ephemera of those in the virtual one whom I hardly even know?
I have absolutely no wish to hear that the baby of a girl I went to primary school with has just started solids or slept through the night. I have only a passing interest in what my high school boyfriend is currently eating for lunch and his thoughts on what might follow for dinner. So why bother?
I've decided it is simply because I can. Just as an unhappy bored teen is easily lured into the drugs scene, my situation working alone in a studio without workmates has made me vulnerable to virtual connections and the unlimited potential for time wasting that comes with them. Cold turkey is the only realistic way to pull myself back from the event horizon.
Because let's face it, if it is happening on Facebook then almost by definition it is simply not an event, and there is unlikely to be any on the immediate horizon. Events are all the other things that happen when we aren't sitting at a keyboard posting about them.
So for one whole week starting today I have only this to say for my status: Eva Bradley is ... not.