glitch25

So... one of the things I decided to do about 2ish or so months ago was to completely unfollow everyone and everything on Facebook. Not unfriend, to be clear. Just unfollow. The idea being that when I was done, my Timeline should only be my posts.. and apparently ads since we can't seem to get rid of those. I wanted to make Facebook a place of deliberate time and not a place where I mindlessly scrolled through my feed. I wanted to be able to deliberately go to people's pages and see what they are up to. I wanted it to be a more significant and deliberate process to do that.

The process of unfollowing everybody and everything was pretty simple in execution albeit time-consuming in its own way. The plan was to unfollow as things cropped up rather than attempt to go into my actual friends lists and address them there. Those whose posts ended up on my feed most often were the firsts to go by virtue of there being more in my face. Then as those whom either posted less or for whom Facebook showed me less posts, those got addressed as it went. This included "liked pages" of either celebrities or bands or groups. One of the things you discover when removing everything is how much crap you clicked "Like" on. SO many pages of SO much stuff... All gone for now.

In this process, I re-followed close family, and I also was sure to enable notifications on all the peoples that I'm close to or felt a need to keep up with closely. And it turns out that it doesn't matter how you have the extra notification flags set. Facebook will ultimately decide what you do and don't see. And going to a person's page is not even a good way to guarantee you'll see everything unless you scroll for days and days.

Not that I was in any way ignorant of this, but what I've continued to learn is that Facebook sucks. It is infuriating how easy it is for Facebook to either lose posts or just outright not show them to you for who knows what reason. I've even lost my own comments to my own posts. As in.. OTHER people will see them, but I can't go back and look at my own comment, much less the comments people have made to them.

Along those lines, if you notice I haven't been "liking" or reacting to your posts lately, chances are, I'm having trouble finding them. Alternately, if you see me react to a week's worth at a time, that's me catching up and getting around to you.

I would say if you have something you want me specifically to see, that you should tag me. That might work, but I'm finding that even that isn't always the case. Up to you.

Somewhere along the line, this whole thing kinda defeats a point. For me, I mean. I'm sure Facebook is finding ways to wring out every penny they can get from us with these bizarre algorithms.

It is one of the reasons I miss this place. Or rather, the place that these journals once had.

So I'm going to preface this whole post by saying that maybe these are observations that I make are only relevant to me, and that this really never happens to other people. I really kinda doubt it, but I figure for the sake of giving people the benefit of the doubt, I should at least state that these are my opinions based on my experiences. Your mileage may vary.

That said and out of the way, one of my latest peeves with regards to social networking, and in particular Facebook lately is the fact that there are people who seem completely willing to participate in the sense that they will post their brains out about anything and everything, but will never comment or communicate with anybody else. To me, Facebook is a place to interact with people you know, particularly those you don't necessarily get to see very often. A place where you can read about people sharing things in their lives and responding to them and showing interest as appropriate. It is a two-way participatory street. Not following through with the two-way part starts to make it less social, and for me, less desirable. And yes, for me, the "Like" button is reasonably sufficient. It at least tells me you read something, and decided to reach out to me to tell me that you enjoyed or otherwise related to what I posted. Even snarky comments are welcome. :-)

That's not to say that people should have to comment to everything or that I expect people to always have something to say about something I might post. But the fact is, if you're on my list, I have some sort of interest in you and your life, and very likely, I will respond to you as you talk about things going on in your neck of the woods. Not only is it polite, but from my perspective, I WANT YOU TO KNOW I'M INTERESTED. I want to commiserate. I want to offer my sympathy. I want to get excited with you. I want to invite you to share something with me or respond to your invitations. I want to interact with you. And obviously, I want you to interact with ME.

And hey.. there are people that I have on my list that don't spend a lot of time on Facebook. They'd rather get off their duff and live life and come online occasionally to share what crazy thing they are doing with their few free moments before they dash off to the next. I don't expect those people to have the time to interact with me on any frequent level. They have an excuse. But those who spend a lot of time "playing" on Facebook, but not a lot of time reaching out are starting to drive me a little nuts.

Pruning is in progress. And I will add that most of those of you who read my journal entries (or that I spend time bantering with on Facebook) are happy to interact with me, so fear not!

I just know that I'm becoming sensitive to this growing social issue where we are falling rapidly away from a social tribal society to this delineated, pigeon-holed existence where it seems socially inappropriate to reach out to people. To smile at and wish a stranger a good day. To introduce yourself to someone you see regularly but do not yet know. To share a moment with another being outside yourself and your bubble. And I for one don't like it.