Tag: Social Media

Another one jumps ship: my friend Pensive Kid has decided to cancel his Facebook account. He recounts his decision in his latest post called So long Facebook, my “Friends” will be missed.

I have thought of joining the ranks of the unfriendable many times before. The closest I have gotten is keeping an account, but having no wall posts and only one profile picture. But now that the Pensive Kid has jumped ship, I feel a sense of urgency in revisiting the topic.

Let’s see what great things Facebook has brought to my life:

• I have gotten back in touch with old friends that I never thought I would ever talk to again
• I catch the occasional news story status update that makes me write to that person and reestablish contact
• …

For the life of me I can’t find any other joy that Facebook has brought to my life…

In fact, I have gotten a bit more aggravation from being a member over the years:

• During my “post a status update and a picture about everything and everything” phase, I would get really mad when people didn’t comment on a witty status update, or a really good picture, or would untag themselves from my pictures
• Looking through some high school “friends’” pictures in exotic and far away places made me feel jealous and horrible about my own life (“Why am I not helping out the starving children in Africa??? Why haven’t I climbed to the summit of a mountain in Switzerland??”)
• Reading other people’s status updates and noticing that they would get 25 comments on the first day (compared to my average of zero) would upset me (“am I not as interesting as they are?? are they not my friends, too???”)
• There was a lot of aggravation when someone would not accept my invite, and there were sleepless nights when someone I did not want to friend would repeatedly send me friend requests

I’m sure I could think of a few more. The point is that, the more I think about it, the more I think that Facebook is the source of all evil: it brings out the worst in us because its whole premise is to create a medium through which we can boast (look at the places I’ve been, look at the Vera Wang wedding gown I got that you didn’t, look at how many friends I got).

The Pensive Kid took more of a physical relationship vs digital relationship approach: physical relationships are more meaningful and we should be devoting time and effort into those, and not our digital personnas (do they really resemble our real life selves?).

So why do I hang onto this devilish thing? The 64 million dollar question that comes to mind is: but what if someone wants to reach me??? I’ve been trying to answer that question… wouldn’t they have my email address already? I’m also on LinkedIn for professional purposes, they could find me there as well. So really, do I need to hang onto this thing for the remote possibility that someone out there may be wanting to get back in touch with me?

I’m not ready to answer these questions yet… I really hope to get there soon. And when I do, we’ll have a little “I quit Facebook” party on this blog 🙂

Happy Facebooking… for as long as you enjoy it.

ina

Photo Credit: http://www.twrtoday.com/Why-I-Hate-Facebook.asp

I don’t follow many people on Twitter, and recently I went through a timeline clean-up, so I have even fewer people I follow. Now, the question is: do they know that I’ve stopped following them? Why can’t I stop thinking about it?

I unfollowed for one reason or another. Sometimes friends post things about themselves that I’m not that interested in, or on the flip side they don’t post enough information about themselves for me to really feel like this is a proper medium to keep in touch. So now that they are not there, I’m supposed to feel relief, right? Wrong! They are still in my head asking me "Why did you unfollow me?" "Are we not friends anymore?" "Should I stop following you, too?"

The answers: I unfollowed you because I just didn’t want to read you anymore, we are still friends (if our friendship has issues, it’s probably not rooted on this particular event), and yes, you can stop following me if you would like. This is America!

ina