Friday, July 11, 2014

The social experiment

I've about had it with social media.

It shows me too much about the lives of people that, honestly, I just don't care about. Or, I've learned things about people, and I liked them better before I knew so much about them.

Remember back before social media?

We had friends (real friends), acquaintances, co-workers, neighbors, etc. Each of those different groups we knew at certain levels.

How do I get back to that? How do I make acquaintances actually be acquaintances? How do I keep up on the people that I really do like (friends).

Now, you might say, "oh silly, just use 'lists'." Yes, that's part of it, but it doesn't cover everything I want.

So, I started plotting an experiment to see if I could use social media in a way that would bring me back to the way things used to be.

This week, when time permits, I've been going through a FB upheaval. Editing my "lists", adding more people to my restricted lists, turning off notifications and even blocking people.

Here's the deal. This is in no way a reflection upon the people themselves. Not at all. It's about ME and what I want to see and what I don't want to see.

(I can't delete my accounts because they are tied to my work accounts. I could create fake accounts and attach them to work but that's against the terms and conditions of FB and would put my business accounts at risk. So. No. I'm not deleting my accounts besides there are people that I genuinely like. My goal is to minimize my exposure to the ones that I'm not really friends with.)

I'm not even done yet, and I feel so much better.

I'm kind of waiting for someone to email me and say, "Hey, did you block me?" Because explaining it will be rather amusing, "No. It's not you. It's me." I doubt that will happen. Social media is a playground for the passive aggressive personality types out there.

It really is about me and my need to reclaim my "circle of trust" so to speak.

There are just some people that I'd like to keep at an arm's length.