Facebook is a joke. After getting sick of having about 3/4 of my “friends” on there never say anything to me (yes, I reached out to them), I finally deleted a lot. I’m literally down to the bare bones of my friends. Family makes up most of it, and the rest are those I actually talk to/text/see on a regular basis. It feels good. I can now feel free to post knowing that those who comment or like a status of mine are people who actually care about what I’m doing with my life.
I got fed up with being the one making all the effort in my friendships, so I took the plunge. My best friend has no Facebook (I think I’ve mentioned this before), and she is so care- and stress-free. I want to be like that. I didn’t know it until I was done, but after I went through my friends and deleted the ones who don’t make any effort with me, I let out a breath. I didn’t realize I’d been holding it in, but I was. It was nerve-wracking to go through, one by one, and narrow it down. But I’m trying to live a more honest life, and honesty ought to start with being honest with yourself, as in, knowing who your real friends are.
You know, it’s ironic. We all quote that saying, “Find out who your real friends are,” blah blah blah, but we don’t really live by it. Facebook is the world of fake friends. It’s a list of those people you’ll see in public, but may or may not say hi to. There’s no excuse for that. With me, everything is genuine. I won’t ever ignore someone I’m friends with. When we go around town and recognize someone we’re “Facebook friends” with, and we pretend not to see them when we know perfectly well we saw each other, it’s going against what being friends is all about, don’t you think?
I’m tired of half-assed relationships. I’ve done it in the past, when I didn’t know any better and/or didn’t know how to fix it, but I’m not doing it anymore. And I encourage you to evaluate your own Facebook friends list. If you haven’t talked to that person in a month or two, at least, and you’ve made an effort to, yet none is returned, delete them. Unless you’re one of those people who suffer from FOMO syndrome.
Another way to think about it: when is your next high school reunion? By all of us keeping up with each other on Facebook, there’s nothing we’ll have to catch up on in person. Isn’t that a little daunting? Imagine, a room full of people who went to the same school, yet there’s no conversation/nothing new to share because everyone already knows everything about each other. Who got married, who had a baby, who never changed, etc. I would rather be surprised.
But I would rather not go through another day like today, where I was surprised by how many people I had to delete because I thought wrong about our “friendship.”
SJP 