Like many people oh-so-late-to-see-the-light, I am a recovering soul; yes, recovering from being sucked into the vortex of on-line social networks. As a recovering addict, I have had to force myself to abstain from such pleasures as reading my twitter feed, poking people on facebook and - in one of the biggest moments - I deleted my program on my iphone that automatically updated everyone and everything all at the same time. I don't read other people's posts, I rarely comment or post anything myself. Essentially, I have tried to disappear. Except for that whole deleting-my-account thing. I mean, hey, I've got a lot of pictures and memories wrapped up in all of that!
Since my self-enforced retirement from the online community, I have given some thought to why I felt the need to make this socially-sacrificing gesture, essentially removing myself from party invitations, birth and death notices, and all other general information about my friends and cohorts. What it boiled down to is very simply stated: I only have time in my life for people I truly care about. Perusing these websites not only diminishes the amount of time I can spend on people I truly care about, it distracts me with slogan-style statuses from people I actually don't know all that well and if the truth were known, I really don't care about very much at all. Not that I wish them ill, I just don't wish to see yet another status about a piece of food stuck to the side of their coffee cup or how their dog farted and it really smelled. Which really gets me thinking about what I want and why I want it: I want to know what the people I care about are doing - which can be counted in a number less than 30 - and I want to touch base with them and them only. So....I think I'm going on there and I'm going to clean house - and leave it only to the people I truly want to know drank out of a dirty coffee cup.
2 comments:
Just updated that friends list and got it down to the bare minimum of people I truly care about...which meant a lot of people got unfriended who might be hurt by it. I hate that. People just shouldn't take it so much to heart...
There are times I wish I had done this. Although I love having all my friends, some of them post a lot of YouTube stuff and never get personal, so you really don't know what they are doing in their private lives, just what they are doing online. And some of them play endless games and then post their progress. I really got on FB so I could see what my closest family members and friends were thinking and doing, and that is all I really care about, too. And I miss seeing you on Facebook.
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