Social Media is Not Social
The Complacency of Pretending to Connect
Tl/dr Facebook sucks these are the reasons.
About six months ago, a friend of mine left Facebook. She had moved several years earlier and we had basically kept in touch with Facebook since then. After she left Facebook, we reverted to calling and texting and I remembered the depth of the friendship we had shared and how shallow it had become by simply occasionally liking or commenting on her posts.
I started paying more attention to what I posted on Facebook and who my “friends” were and, more importantly, how we interacted, and I became quite unsettled.
Besides the glaring things that are wrong with Facebook,
The fact that you can’t scroll more than one or two posts without running into an ad;
The people who are purposely oblique with a very public post yet get offended when you ask them to clarify, and tell you, someone who they have as your friend, that it’s none of your business;
The people who have weaponized the friend button and if you breathe wrong, bam, you’re gone;
The fact that so many posts on Facebook are simply scams;
The people who get offended by something and post a cute meme to bully you into feeling bad;
The fact that Facebook can control when it sends you to Facebook jail based on a series of algorithms that are so badly engineered and there is no human you can appeal to to review your case;
The fact that Facebook is the modern version of the annual Christmas letter where you brag on your personal achievements and those of your families and pay lip service to the first six or seven other Christmas letters in the feed; and
The fact that, and come on now, admit this, you know it’s true, sometimes when you sit back and look through your friends list, you wonder who over half of those people are.
There are also other minor things that are even worse.
How many times have you gone on Facebook and seen a post someone else made and had your feelings hurt? Sometimes it’s because a person meant to hurt your feelings with that post, other times, it’s because you feel left out because you weren’t included. But, realistically, lots of things happen without you, it’s just when it’s thrown in your face that you even feel hurt. Did you ever consider that maybe if you were in better communication IRL with that person, they may have invited you?
When I created this blog, I did so because two people were incredibly vocal about the fact that they would miss my photos. Neither of them have subscribed to my blog, so yeah, they only wanted to see my photos if I put them where it was convenient.
Facebook gives you a false sense that you have all these friends. I had close to 500 Facebook friends when I began deleting my posts. I also deleted 5 friends per week, ones I had not interacted with. I’m down to 223 friends now. I have said several times that July 31 is my last day. Only 14 people have subscribed to my blog. Interesting note, none of my brothers or sisters have. Not one person has commented on any of my blog posts and I have gotten one like on one blog post. That is more realistic.
And last but not least, why, oh why did I ever think it was a good idea to share so much information with basically strangers? When I delete my account at midnight tonight, I will have downloaded and saved 16,729 photos and videos and deleted 2864 posts. Way TMI.
Amen, sister!!!!
Nicely written 👏