Last post, I talked about how I was deleting my photos and likes in my attempt to delete my Facebook account, as I continue with this process, I will eventually be deleting all my posts as well. But what has been the hardest is deleting friends.
If we are honest, during the life of a Facebook account, many of us have seasons of people we are friends with. We have the friends from where we work, friends from where we worked before that, the friends of the other parents in our kids school, the other parents on our kids sports teams, the parents of your kids friends, your kids' friends themselves, your kids' teachers, maybe even your own teachers (as more older generations have been making Facebook accounts recently).
We have friends of our spouse's "people"(coworkers, their friends from high school/college, their hobbies), people who we don't even really know, but they are friends with our friends and us being friends on Facebook is way for us to share photos with each other when we both attend events hosted by our mutual friend.
We have friends from our churches, our clubs, our groups, our hobbies, we even have friends from our favorite coffee shops and restaurants--at least I know I did, we always frequented a Great Harvest Bread Co. and I was friends with the employees of my favorite bakery. I know, I was a stalker-but I am not alone, I am sure you do that too, please tell me you do!
And then we have friends from our family and our spouse's family, our sibling's in-laws and their extended family. If you ever moved, you may have friends from multiple cities, we friend people who were in our birthing classes, or those who we took a college class with, and if you are younger than 20 everyone you meet will probably become your friend on Facebook.
So how can I just delete all those seasons of friendships? Well, it hasn't been easy.
When I first started deleting, I seriously went through all the people who I had not had contact with--I mean page to page contact with-- in two years ( I haven't liked/commented on anything of theirs, and I don't remember them liking/commenting on any posts of mine). I had heard that rubric from people who get rid of clothes in their closet--if you haven't worn it in the past two years, you probably aren't going to, and sadly, if I hadn't talked to someone then I probably would not mourn the loss of that online relationship (and they probably wouldn't miss me either), so I went through that first night and unfriended roughly 50-100 people.
I was so excited! I was actually doing what I told people I was going to do and I love seeing tangible progress on a project. But I saw something in myself as I absentmindedly hit "unfriend" over and over and over again.
First, I had little tinges of guilt. I felt like I was just erasing people from my mind. How could I so easily sever the only connection I had to these people. Like I said in my opening post, I had gotten onto Facebook to CONNECT with people who I hadn't seen in a while and now that was the very reason I was saying goodbye to them. At this stage I wasn't even telling people, (other than the general message post I sent out, but was only seen by roughly 50 people) I was just going through the bottom of my friend list, unfriend, unfriend, unfriend. It made me aware of the seasons which I became friends with that person, I went through a mini reflection process of how much/ or how little I interacted with them. But then I moved on......
I also felt relief unfriending some people. I am sorry, and you can judge me all you want, but there were some people I was friends with on Facebook that I didn't want to be friends with. I felt obligated. And there is social pressure that once you are friends with someone, you must stay friends with someone. Because if for some reason one of you unfriends the other and the one who has been "erased" finds out about it, there is a deep rejection that is felt. And then it is awkward if/when you see that person the next time (or more likely, you interact with one of your mutual friends) Because even if you are no longer friends with someone on Facebook, they are still there. You don't want to acknowledge them, but there they are. We are a vicious society when there is social conflict that has been resolved by Unfriending.
Admittedly, I had some people who I hadn't really wanted to be friends with, but had not wanted to go through the awful act of unfriending them before this undertaking, and so relief was a fitting emotion, which then gave way to the above stated feelings of guilt. Because I knew my own heart and it was the wanting to unfriend them that made me shameful of myself.
And the last emotion was of course regret. There were many people who I knew I would never talk to again after I unfriended them. Not that I was talking to them now, but once I hit that unfriend button, it was like a black curtain was going to come down between us and I would never again have access to them.....should I want it. And that is where I saw my true selfish nature of how I used Facebook, it's about what I want. If I want to talk to them, if I want to see their posts, if I want to click on all the photos, if I want to comment, if I want to open the message.....I am not saying I didn't want those things, I am just saying that the control was left to me to choose my levels of interaction with people. But once I unfriended them, that choice was gone and I was subject to their own privacy settings. And being a once-and-for-all person, I did not want to unfriend people only to give them a friend request again to add them back on.
Doing what I had said I would do..... it came with consequences. I had to say goodbye to people who I said I would say goodbye to. There as a moment once or twice along the way that I thought "Oh I could just narrow down my friends to the few who I interact with now, or the few who I definitely want to keep in touch with..." But that just wouldn't be fair. I said I was going to delete everyone, and that's what I would do. I didn't want to make my own popularity contest within my friends to see who my favorites were.
So after the first few sessions of deleting groups of people based on how much I interacted with them, I started deleting seasons of my life. I chose one evening "Tonight is the night I delete everyone from high school" then a few days later "Tonight is the night I delete everyone from the city we moved from 2 years ago" Then a week later "Tonight is the night I delete everyone from the church we don't go to anymore (because we had moved away)" then a few days later "Tonight is the night I delete everyone from the church I am going to NOW!" Oh that was a tough one, just because I didn't want to hurt people's feelings, but for me it was easy, I see them regularly :)
Until I got down to about 60 friends. That will be another post, but I wanted to go through my initial observations of myself as I went through the process. This was just the beginning.
Tonight's Coffee: None, I think an evening tea sounds good. Like a Mint or Lemon Ginger.......
