Leave. Me. Alone. -YouCave
Do you struggle with finding enough alone time? Do you secretly resent your friends for all those hours you wasted hanging out with them playing Settlers of Catan?
Have you ever fled to a beach resort, excited for uninterrupted internet usage in the lobby? Were you then dismayed to find your friends’ intrusion continued through the devilish devices of social media? Are you frustrated with how your computer has been transformed from a haven of solitude into a communal nightmare, where even your self-diagnosis for back pain at WebMD can be shared?
Your FaceFriends have the potential to know everything you’re doing online, and soon full disclosure will become mandatory, forced upon us by advertisers and facebook overlords. We will be too busy sharing our favorite brand of toothpaste to realize our white shirts have turned to yellow from body oil because we have sat in our own filth for months. This is the future we face.
Welcome to YouCave, an unsocial media website. Think of YouCave as the ultimate form of online solitude, the antidote to social media. No YouCave profile can ever be connected. The friend requests that are made will be responded to with an automatic “Leave. Me. Alone.” accompanied by a picture of this cat. This response is simultaneously tweeted, facebooked, instagramed, and foursquared to all of the unfortunate user’s applications to keep them from making the same mistake again. They will learn to love the quiet.
You can post whatever you want to your YouCave wall, e.g. Yahoo News Articles, kitty pictures, memes, etc. because no one will ever see it, not even you. After posting something to your wall, it automatically begins sinking into the depths of the YouCave Lake. Through the use of expensive animation, you can even watch as your newly posted information slowly descends into the inky blackness, disappearing forever.
Each user is only allowed to upload one picture. All other uploaded pictures will instantly sink into the depth. This picture will sit in the middle of the screen, surrounded by dark colors and a texture that connotes a cave like environment. In addition, all YouCavers have the choice of turning on sound effects, such as the cavern water drip and an occasional furtive scurry. After being welcomed into the cave environment, most of our users simply stare at the screen, breathing in the solitude like a sweet elixir. At least, this is what I do. I have no idea about anyone else because YouCavers do not share information.
If you’re tired of your life becoming one giant show for the comment and criticism of others, join YouCave and get back the life you deserve, one of complete isolation and darkness. Enjoy.
Snotting black 
[…] liked this, you might want to read A Brief History of the To-Do List from Brain Pickings, or read YouCave: an Unsocial Media Website or The Shopper’s Eye: A Tale of Desperation, both from […]
A radical therapy, but there’s lots of people out there who could really benefit from it. Enjoyed the satire. 🙂
Well thank you very much sir. I know that there are times I could certainly benefit from it.
Reposted this to facebook. Exactly why I went off it for some time but then most of my family is on there and that’s usually the only way I hear from them. So I truge through all of the meaningless crap and wonder how these people can believe their post is worthy of ANYONE reading. Just thought I would reccomend You Cave and if even one of them joins I will dance for joy! The cat is outrageous. Word Press is a welcome relief but don’t you join You Cave; I look forward your to post and always leave laughing. We all need that! Keep em Comming!!
YouCave: big enough for everyone to hide. Thanks for reading!
I gave up YouCave for lent.
Sometimes it’s hard to detach from the cavernous atmosphere of the cave, but I’m glad you managed to do so.
YouCave ……. so THAT”S where I’ve been for the past few months. I couldn’t fathom out why it was so quiet and I didn’t know when my friends had a headache or what they had for breakfast. I like to keep informed about such interesting things 🙂
Haha you should have guessed from the echoey dripping that you were probably in a cavern of some sort. Glad you got it figured out!
I got the dripping and went so far as to replace the washers in all the taps. 🙂
First off, I want to meet the person that was brave enough to shave that cat, cause he looks really pissed off. Secondly, I would not fit well in a YouCave. First thing I would miss would be your overly abundant sense of humor. Wish I had some of it. Your whole blog makes me grin from ear to ear. Even the name cracks me up, where ever did that come from? I will definitely be giving you some link love on this one. Hope you don’t mind if I share.
Not at all! Please do share——the title of the blog came from my move to Cairo, where pollution accumulates inside the nostril and turns the snot black.
One of my friends made the joke that if I write something good, it’s like I’m snotting gold, and I liked that too. Thanks for stopping by!
What brilliance there is in your cave! The darkness and the light just did a fabulous dance, and made me smile. I really enjoyed this post. I share your ambivalence, sense of conflict about social media, etc. Only a true introvert could write with such pithiness on this subject. I thank you for visiting one of my sites a few weeks ago. I have been overwhelmed with family matters and my mother’s death a month ago, so I have not been posting and have not visited other blog and web sites for some time. Thanks for calling me out of my own little cave!
I love your “about” page. I love your sense of humor. I will come again.
Well thanks for stopping by! I’m glad you caught the tone of ambivalence…I feel like as a blogger, tweeter, facebooker, emailer, etc. I can never truly dislike social media. But I can never completely love it without wondering what we’re doing to ourselves.
Probably worth setting up.
And getting advertisers involved.
Why not? It’s a goldmine. No harm in selling out.
“Leave Me Alone.”
you got it.
Hahaha, love it! For me it would be the next logical step from my current status as a sort of Facebook phantom of the opera. I don’t share much anyway, might as well just put a ring on it and join YouCave. Nice post!
Thanks a lot! I think many more people will have your realization as well—they’re already on the way to the YouCave.
Do we have the option of placeing all of our Facebook Friends in the cave and sealing the opening?
Hmmmm….a sort of communal account/trap. I like the idea. Let me see what the web developers can do with it. I’m just the ideas girl.
If, and it’s a huge if. I ever get known for whatever it is I do, I’ll join YouCave. The concept is perfect. Imagine only 30 e-mails a day and twenty of them from Facebook asking where’ve you been. Nobody asking for help at whatever I do.
That’s the beauty of YouCave: complete solitude.
Whoa, it sure is dark in here…
drip drip drip…….scurry.
Fantastic solution. Is there a 12 step progra?
Just two steps, actually. 1. Sign up for YouCave. 2. Be alone.
I resented the time I spent playing Settlers of Catan until I won a few games…
YouCave – online solitude – sinking into the depths of anonymity: sounds suspiciously like my blog…
If you’re accusing me of plagiarism I won’t have it…..one day I’ll win a game of Settlers and then I may change my tune as well. Why can I never get longest road!
Yes, longest road – my 10 year old nephew is good at that. I’ll have to get him to explain his strategy.
That’s one bitter cat…
That’s what too much social media will do to you.
All I hope is that somewhere in the cave, there is a device which ensures that I never again miss a picture posted by some long ago ex work colleague of what they are having for dinner. I’m fairly certain that they are of importance, I stare at pictures of congealed looking minced beef thinking there surely has to be a hidden message. Like the ones found by playing old Beatles records backwards.
Congealed minced meat has been God’s preferred communication method for a number of centuries. I”ll pass on the suggestion to the web developers.
Reblogged this on | David Krancher and commented:
What Will YouCave Do with All My Non-Information?
Do I have to have the cat too though?
WHERE DO I SIGN UP????
Sign up information will be coming soon. You’ll have have to give up a lot of your personal details, but it will be worth it for the solitude. And yes, you have to have the cat.
Ah sure, I’ve given out my personal information so many times already, there’s very little personal about it any more….What’s once more between friends. Or people you’ve never met and are very unlikely to.
As if an insomniac needs one more meaningless thing to fill his time with. How do I sign up? 😀
I’ll set up a site where you can put your credit card information…..YouCave will come out a few years after that.