Why I gave up trying to delete myself from the internet

An enjoyable trip down memory lane soon became a boring full-time job

By Avantika Chilkoti

Facebook remembers things about me that I wiped from my own memory a long time ago. Since I joined in 2006 I have been invited to 1,920 events, including the fifth birthday party of Movida, a long-defunct London nightclub; wake-like drinks to mark the start of the Brexit process; and a vegan conference (I have never been vegan). It also records my membership of a bewildering array of groups, including one for followers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu-nationalist paramilitary organisation, and another for people who grew up in Huntington, West Virginia, once “America’s fattest city” (I am neither a Hindu-nationalist nor an obese American).

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