I find it a fascinating topic from a social commentary point of view.
It presents many dilemmas.
We now have the ability to simply "remove" people from our lives and never talk to them again, if that's what we so desire!
There's these people I wish to remove from my life. But the problem is of course that I would still see them in some places and they are the kinds of people who would be emotionally tormented by the "un-friending". Trust me, there is good reasons.
So what to do? To keep them but merely "hide" my stuff from them, or to remove them and block them and pretend "I deleted my account because social media is a drain on society and I can't deal with it anymore"??
I'm a 90s kid... So I still know what it's like to play outside! Or be forced to spend hours in my room in the winter/rainy days practising scales and playing old tapes or vinyls of Aerosmith's better albums. Where you could create your own world and not everybody could poke their nose in and now we want to "share" our world with everyone, we "like" everyone's stories and we want to be a part of it but there's not the human contact required anymore. We don't get to "validate" our feelings with another person anymore...
For me, having friends/family in far away places, it's great as a tool for communicating but other people want in on your business all the time!!
I don't know exactly where I'm going with this! But it makes you think, doesn't it? How much is too much?
Comments
Instagram
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
Many guitars have a re-sale value. Some you'll never want to sell.
Stockist of: Earvana & Graphtech nuts, Faber Tonepros & Gotoh hardware, Fatcat bridges. Highwood Saddles.
Pickups from BKP, Oil City & Monty's pickups.
Expert guitar repairs and upgrades - fretwork our speciality! www.felineguitars.com. Facebook too!
Wouldn't you count forum members as "digital" friends?
From that sounds of the OP I think these are "real" friends that he doesn't like any more.
To the OP...personally I wouldn't do anything. If you are concerned that you'll hurt their feelings then just unfollow them. Only unfriend someone if you want them to feel the knife bite. I suppose I only use social media for "public access" communication so I would have no problem with people I didn't like much seeing my posts; if I used it for more personal stuff I guess I can understand wanting to complete unfriend someone.
All of my good friends I still keep in touch with, it was a good move to declutter everything from my life. The problem was I realised why I'd lost touch with most of these people in the real world. One thing that made me pause was that when me and Mrs Wulfhere first got together we exchanged messages through it and I would miss them, but then I just thought that if I kept it FB would be facilitator of my relationships and friendships. I don't want to give anyone the power to influence how I communicate with people.
I don't miss it at all. Realise some people still love it and I don't judge.
was constantly posting.
I ditched everything apart from Twitter years ago when I moved back to the UK and I barely use that for anything other than news, deals etc. If someone or something is important to me they'll know
Just delete the entire account and live free of the shackles of social media
I've got old friends who live abroad, and my sister and one of my brothers live 100 miles away so it's quite nice when they post updates so I can keep up with what they are up to.
I'm not on it all the time though. I don't have the mobile app installed on my phone. There's no way I'm giving Facebook permissions to my SMS messages. I normally log in and check it for 5 minutes in the evening, but I don't do that everyday.
You do need to manage your friends though to sort them into the right categories.
I realise it can be extremely useful for some people, but for a sociopath like me it's just a pain in the bum, really. As I frequently said, I'm afraid there are only so many updates on what someone is having for their tea that I can handle.
However, I signed up again last summer when I was in the band. It was supposed to be an efficient way for everyone to keep in touch between rehearsals so that we always knew what we were supposed to be doing, but the singer and other guitarist started ignoring it and making decisions without posting them so I still wound up being left out. When I left the band I deleted my account again.
I used to be on twitter, too, but as I have the ability to start a fight in an empty room, I soon had to quit that, too, cos I'd keep on embarrassing myself.
Having said all that, I have nothing against either platform - if someone tells me they're on them and they work for them, good luck, but they're not for me.
enjoyed this blog. Im currently studying social sciences and althoug we havent covered social media yet Im sure its looming.
Re. FB I held off from joining it for ages and eventually peer pressure and "needing" to use it for bands, gigs etc made me join. I fell into it straight away and was on there a while. Ive come off it now. Not because I dont think its useful or as a badge of honour ("OH facebook? yeah im not on there!") kinda way. I just got really depressed with generic crap that people post on there. I wish as a society we could be a bit more private. for instance I hate that the first thing people can do when theyve had a child is post a picture of a minutes old baby.
However its not likely to change anytime soon but it is fascinating when you dedicate any time to actually thinking about it properly
I sent her a friend request yesterday which she has so far ignored....
The best thing about Facebook though is finding out which of those who walk among us are fucking Nazis.