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.......
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Saturday, October 25, 2014
What? You are deleting EVERYTHING?
Before I go any further I should probably tell you why I am DELETING my Facebook account and not simply deactivating it.
If I were to deactivate my account, Facebook holds on to my friends, my likes, my posts, my photos, everything connected to my name, and keeps it for me safe and sound just in case I decide to reactivate my account at any time. I could be off for YEARS and they will still have everything in its place waiting for my eventual return. And that is lovely if I was wanting to take a break or sabbatical, I know many people who have done that for lent or to self regulate their Facebook involvements.
But I did not want a mere break. I am an ALL or Nothing kind of gal and I wanted to be free from the clutches of Facebook. But there was always something holding me back......pages. I happen to manage a couple pages and I still needed to have access to them. (I don't know how, but one of the pages actually has its own login info so it really isn't an excuse for me, but the other two pages were created through someone's personal account and when I tried to recreate them as a separate entity, Facebook sends me a little message telling me that they only want "people" making accounts and that it looks like I am making a business page.....tell me, how does Nutella or Big Bang Theory have accounts? Do they have some corporate person that has made their page under their personal accounts or did they make them before this new personhood limitation was put on accounts......either way, I have yet to figure out how to make a page without having my own account linked to it).
So, I don't want to have a personal Facebook page waiting for me somewhere luring me back and I need to have access to business pages still on a regular basis.....conclusion: DELETE everything that is mine, that way I have no one to connect to, no photos bouncing around out there, but I can still log in occasionally to do the business sides of things...until someone else takes those over, and then I'm gone for good.
So let the deleting begin!
Wait, I can't just delete all my photos, some of them I took on my phone and then uploaded them straight to Facebook. And I have such cute kids, I can't lose these photos. I started looking back at the beginning of my posts and my youngest was three when I first started Facebook, I don't even know if I have any of those photos somewhere in my house or on my computer......so I started downloading photos and that takes time! Oh my goodness, there are nights where we put on a movie, and I sit here slowly downloading my own photos one at a time. I don't know what I am going to do with them, but at least I know I have them somewhere, and then I go back to Facebook and delete the photo, or album.
And then some of my photos were ones that other people took and then tagged me in....so I can't delete them. And I may want to still have access to them especially if they are of my super cute kids (which they always are, who wants to take a photo of my husband and me?) So, that means I have to download it and then remove the tag that they put on the photo attaching it to my account. (Uh oh, is that bad I am downloading my friends' pictures of my family--I mean, it's their photo, but the photo is of US....how many times has anyone stolen my photos that I have tagged them in? Probably no one, because they are staying on Facebook and will always have access to the things we took photos of ten years ago...)
So here I am slowly deleting my photos, and my "likes", oh yes, Facebook keeps track of everything I have ever liked and I still have 32 hidden likes that no longer fit into the prescribed categories of "restaurants, movies, music, books, and normal stuff like that. At one point I had liked the page "hugging", because who doesn't like to hug......and I eventually found the like (under "other likes" go figure) and had to unlike the page. I had also liked "colors" and "Nutella" and what I realized as I went through unliking everything, is how pointless it is to "like" at all. Why do I need to tell you what I like? And more importantly do you even care?
Of course you don't. I mean someone might care for a brief moment like "Oh that's fun, I like that too...." but we all forget about it the next minute and move on with our lives. But Facebook doesn't. No, they track that information and keep it as a filter to know what kind of advertisements to give me. It's an instant graph maker to tell them how many women age 25-35 like Nutella, and Old Navy, and Princess Bride. Facebook is literally heading up the marketing research departments for Corporate America. They don't even have to do any work to get the information, we willingly click on every little thing that catches our interest.
So, since I am no longer going to be using a Facebook account for my own personal use, I no longer want to offer my information for Facebook to use either, because I am sure the higher people in the offices were planning to shape the world off of the knowledge that I love Parks and Recreation. Which I still do... whether I am telling anyone about it or not.
See, I don't need to show people all the little things about myself to validate who I am and what my interests are. I don't need to know how many other thousands of people like the same things I do. And I definitely don't need to be wasting my time scrolling through the ads from those companies/shows on my newsfeed, thus solidifying my consumerism loyalty. So yes, I am deleting everything on Facebook, but I am not deleting my personality, or history, that still stays the same, even if it hasn't been declared to other people online.
There are times when I wonder if other people out there feel the same way I do? Do students in high school know that they really do have a personality even if they haven't declared an interest online? Is the photo still a good photo even if 100 people haven't liked it on Instagram? Does the generation coming up know how to just enjoy a moment without sharing about it by uploading the picture or telling people where they are and who they are with? Can they just BE and know it is enough to be there.
Tonight's Coffee: Oh back to the Kona Coffee again, in a travel mug, with a spoonful of sugar and a splash of half and half :)
If I were to deactivate my account, Facebook holds on to my friends, my likes, my posts, my photos, everything connected to my name, and keeps it for me safe and sound just in case I decide to reactivate my account at any time. I could be off for YEARS and they will still have everything in its place waiting for my eventual return. And that is lovely if I was wanting to take a break or sabbatical, I know many people who have done that for lent or to self regulate their Facebook involvements.
But I did not want a mere break. I am an ALL or Nothing kind of gal and I wanted to be free from the clutches of Facebook. But there was always something holding me back......pages. I happen to manage a couple pages and I still needed to have access to them. (I don't know how, but one of the pages actually has its own login info so it really isn't an excuse for me, but the other two pages were created through someone's personal account and when I tried to recreate them as a separate entity, Facebook sends me a little message telling me that they only want "people" making accounts and that it looks like I am making a business page.....tell me, how does Nutella or Big Bang Theory have accounts? Do they have some corporate person that has made their page under their personal accounts or did they make them before this new personhood limitation was put on accounts......either way, I have yet to figure out how to make a page without having my own account linked to it).
So, I don't want to have a personal Facebook page waiting for me somewhere luring me back and I need to have access to business pages still on a regular basis.....conclusion: DELETE everything that is mine, that way I have no one to connect to, no photos bouncing around out there, but I can still log in occasionally to do the business sides of things...until someone else takes those over, and then I'm gone for good.
So let the deleting begin!
Wait, I can't just delete all my photos, some of them I took on my phone and then uploaded them straight to Facebook. And I have such cute kids, I can't lose these photos. I started looking back at the beginning of my posts and my youngest was three when I first started Facebook, I don't even know if I have any of those photos somewhere in my house or on my computer......so I started downloading photos and that takes time! Oh my goodness, there are nights where we put on a movie, and I sit here slowly downloading my own photos one at a time. I don't know what I am going to do with them, but at least I know I have them somewhere, and then I go back to Facebook and delete the photo, or album.
And then some of my photos were ones that other people took and then tagged me in....so I can't delete them. And I may want to still have access to them especially if they are of my super cute kids (which they always are, who wants to take a photo of my husband and me?) So, that means I have to download it and then remove the tag that they put on the photo attaching it to my account. (Uh oh, is that bad I am downloading my friends' pictures of my family--I mean, it's their photo, but the photo is of US....how many times has anyone stolen my photos that I have tagged them in? Probably no one, because they are staying on Facebook and will always have access to the things we took photos of ten years ago...)
So here I am slowly deleting my photos, and my "likes", oh yes, Facebook keeps track of everything I have ever liked and I still have 32 hidden likes that no longer fit into the prescribed categories of "restaurants, movies, music, books, and normal stuff like that. At one point I had liked the page "hugging", because who doesn't like to hug......and I eventually found the like (under "other likes" go figure) and had to unlike the page. I had also liked "colors" and "Nutella" and what I realized as I went through unliking everything, is how pointless it is to "like" at all. Why do I need to tell you what I like? And more importantly do you even care?
Of course you don't. I mean someone might care for a brief moment like "Oh that's fun, I like that too...." but we all forget about it the next minute and move on with our lives. But Facebook doesn't. No, they track that information and keep it as a filter to know what kind of advertisements to give me. It's an instant graph maker to tell them how many women age 25-35 like Nutella, and Old Navy, and Princess Bride. Facebook is literally heading up the marketing research departments for Corporate America. They don't even have to do any work to get the information, we willingly click on every little thing that catches our interest.
So, since I am no longer going to be using a Facebook account for my own personal use, I no longer want to offer my information for Facebook to use either, because I am sure the higher people in the offices were planning to shape the world off of the knowledge that I love Parks and Recreation. Which I still do... whether I am telling anyone about it or not.
See, I don't need to show people all the little things about myself to validate who I am and what my interests are. I don't need to know how many other thousands of people like the same things I do. And I definitely don't need to be wasting my time scrolling through the ads from those companies/shows on my newsfeed, thus solidifying my consumerism loyalty. So yes, I am deleting everything on Facebook, but I am not deleting my personality, or history, that still stays the same, even if it hasn't been declared to other people online.
There are times when I wonder if other people out there feel the same way I do? Do students in high school know that they really do have a personality even if they haven't declared an interest online? Is the photo still a good photo even if 100 people haven't liked it on Instagram? Does the generation coming up know how to just enjoy a moment without sharing about it by uploading the picture or telling people where they are and who they are with? Can they just BE and know it is enough to be there.
Tonight's Coffee: Oh back to the Kona Coffee again, in a travel mug, with a spoonful of sugar and a splash of half and half :)
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Filtered Honesty
When I first announced to all my Facebook friends that I was going to be leaving, no one around me could predict my reasons. I hadn't shown any signs of dissatisfaction with the Facebook world and I updated my status regularly, meaning once every day or two. My daughter was in phase where she was reliving her sixth grade year by taking a photo of whatever she was doing that day, sending it to me, and then I would post it on Facebook and tag her sixth grade teacher in it with the opening line of "Happy Summer Mr. "sixth grade teacher's name" with some kind of description to the photo taken. So there was a daily update from our family and then all of a sudden I post this.....
July 17, 2014
I wanted to let you all know that I am going to begin a LONG process of deactivating my facebook. I want to stop the cycle of them gaining info from my profile and to do so, I am going to eventually unlike all the pages I have liked and eventually "unfriend" everyone I am friends with on here. Because deactivating my account does not erase the digital connections the internet makes, erasing everything is the only way to effectively free myself from facebook. This will take some time, I am not leaving immediately so if you want get my contact info please message me and hopefully we will continue to speak to each other in real life I will continue to post for the rest of the summer, and then I will start the new school year in a more present way to those around me. There are so many things that I don't really talk about on here, and I know many of you pick and choose the things you share, I do not want to live in that kind of "filtered honesty" and I look forward to engaging with less people in a more meaningful way. Love you all, and thank you for being my friends Know that when the time comes and I am not your friend on facebook anymore, it does not reflect anything about our real friendship in the actual world.
At this time, I had 450+ friends, more than the average friend list of people my age, but nothing to brag about. A whopping 30 people liked the status and I received a few comments from those supporting my decision. There were a couple comments showing concern for me leaving, either not wanting to lose contact, or wanting to know the dirty details for what stimulated my decision.
And while my reasons stated above were accurate to a degree, there obviously had to be a tipping point to make me finally act on the thoughts that I publicly shared.
You see, Facebook filters the updates I see on my newsfeed. It takes the top 50ish people I interact with, those people whose statuses I like, comment on, and personal pages I visit, and that is who shows up on my newsfeed. Likewise, my status updates and pictures only show up on my friends' newsfeeds if they like, comment on, or hover over my statuses as they read them. So while I can say that I had 450+ friends at that time, I really only knew what about 50 of them were sharing on Facebook. Because let's face it, I am lazy and don't often visit my friends' personal pages because I am only on Facebook to get a quick update before I go on to the real reason I am online in the first place...I.E. looking for an email, or a recipe, or something on Pinterest to drool over.
So while I was staying on Facebook to stay connected to people who I had moved away from, or had moved away from me, or who I was only acquaintances with anyways.....I really had no idea what was going on with MANY of the people I thought I knew. I was relying on what Facebook showed me about people and more specifically what they GAVE Facebook to show me.
I realized that many of the people, who I thought I was close to, really did not share themselves openly online. They presented the pretty parts, the acceptable parts, the controlled parts of their lives, which is right and appropriate when you are sharing things with strangers who really don't know the real you. But many of these people I had considered close friends at one point. But since I had not talked to them in person for some time, I was assuming that everything I saw on Facebook was an accurate portrayal of the normal activities of their lives. Especially because I was in the middle of sharing a day to day account through our "Happy Summer" photos.
I lived in that "assumption" until I found out that my at-one-time-close friend was getting a divorce. Thankfully, I did not find out about it on Facebook, I found out through one of my kids who is friends with their kids--you see, they were TALKING on the phone, and it came up. My day stopped. I was shocked, I had no idea there was anything out of the ordinary going on in their lives. I had not seen any comment, feeling, or notion about such an event happening so I had been living with the assumption that nothing had changed. I was friends with both the husband and the wife and I never suspected anything could be less than what I had seen their marriage to be the entire time I had known them. Now, I will admit that I have no idea what their marriage was like in their home, but the updates, photos, and statuses had stayed the same since I had seen them last-a couple years ago. Which made me question why I was relying on Facebook to keep me connected to people when a true adult will not share the full reality of their lives on there anyways.
But this wake up to the reality of their stage of life made me acknowledge how I was not honest about my life either. I don't show everyone how I yell at my kids when I have asked them to pick up the living room and I am hungry and tired and take it out on them, I don't show them the pictures of my kitchen with the dishes balanced precariously in the sink. I don't brag about how many goals my son allowed in to the net as he watched the ball roll past him.....Facebook is for sharing the best things about ourselves so that people see the best parts of us. It's an attempt to make our second life online seem better than the one we are living in person. It's my pretend life if I got to ignore all the things I am ashamed of or disappointed by. So why would someone share so openly that the marriage that they thought would last forever, just ended? Why would I expect them to?
With my new understanding about the limited relationship I had with so many people, I just didn't want to waste my time with it anymore. I had had enough, but in an effort to protect my friend (who had not shared anything about the divorce openly on Facebook) I stated the above reasons. Even in my declaration that I was tired of filtering my life, I filtered my true reasons, out of protection for my friend, but also protection of myself.
I was ashamed that after years of being close with them when we lived in the same city, I so quickly had moved on. I had become satisfied with the vague updates and photos of their normal life. I had not talked to them on the phone, had not planned a visit. I had not continued the relationship after we moved away. Hence, I was not part of the true friends who knew of the hardship they were experiencing. I had depended on Facebook to inform me of what was happening, and because I had trusted that information, I had not thought to connect on a deeper level. "I have no need to call, I know what's going on with them" Everything is just as I left it......or so I thought. I had believed the filtered honesty and found I was guilty of it myself.
When I have conversations on the phone, or in person, with one of my friends there are things that come out of the conversation that never would have been shared on Facebook, or text, or email. There is something so meaningful in true human contact. It is honest and raw, with tears and laughter. We speak in a pace that is natural. We listen and can hear the emotion in our voices. I am no longer satisfied with the pretend relationship of online communities. I want to NOT know what is going on in my friends' lives day to day, because then maybe I will MISS them and WANT to know what is new with them. Then I will call them and set up a coffee date and talk with them for hours about the little things in our family. The funny things, and hard things, the schedules and the teenagers, the recipes and the crafts. There is so much more than what I would ever tell you in a status update and I want to know more than what has filtered through the newsfeed.
Tonight's coffee: the leftovers from the 4 o'clock pot. So the cup is half as full with extra cream to fill it a bit more, but then less sugar because it already has more cream....
July 17, 2014
I wanted to let you all know that I am going to begin a LONG process of deactivating my facebook. I want to stop the cycle of them gaining info from my profile and to do so, I am going to eventually unlike all the pages I have liked and eventually "unfriend" everyone I am friends with on here. Because deactivating my account does not erase the digital connections the internet makes, erasing everything is the only way to effectively free myself from facebook. This will take some time, I am not leaving immediately so if you want get my contact info please message me and hopefully we will continue to speak to each other in real life I will continue to post for the rest of the summer, and then I will start the new school year in a more present way to those around me. There are so many things that I don't really talk about on here, and I know many of you pick and choose the things you share, I do not want to live in that kind of "filtered honesty" and I look forward to engaging with less people in a more meaningful way. Love you all, and thank you for being my friends Know that when the time comes and I am not your friend on facebook anymore, it does not reflect anything about our real friendship in the actual world.
At this time, I had 450+ friends, more than the average friend list of people my age, but nothing to brag about. A whopping 30 people liked the status and I received a few comments from those supporting my decision. There were a couple comments showing concern for me leaving, either not wanting to lose contact, or wanting to know the dirty details for what stimulated my decision.
And while my reasons stated above were accurate to a degree, there obviously had to be a tipping point to make me finally act on the thoughts that I publicly shared.
You see, Facebook filters the updates I see on my newsfeed. It takes the top 50ish people I interact with, those people whose statuses I like, comment on, and personal pages I visit, and that is who shows up on my newsfeed. Likewise, my status updates and pictures only show up on my friends' newsfeeds if they like, comment on, or hover over my statuses as they read them. So while I can say that I had 450+ friends at that time, I really only knew what about 50 of them were sharing on Facebook. Because let's face it, I am lazy and don't often visit my friends' personal pages because I am only on Facebook to get a quick update before I go on to the real reason I am online in the first place...I.E. looking for an email, or a recipe, or something on Pinterest to drool over.
So while I was staying on Facebook to stay connected to people who I had moved away from, or had moved away from me, or who I was only acquaintances with anyways.....I really had no idea what was going on with MANY of the people I thought I knew. I was relying on what Facebook showed me about people and more specifically what they GAVE Facebook to show me.
I realized that many of the people, who I thought I was close to, really did not share themselves openly online. They presented the pretty parts, the acceptable parts, the controlled parts of their lives, which is right and appropriate when you are sharing things with strangers who really don't know the real you. But many of these people I had considered close friends at one point. But since I had not talked to them in person for some time, I was assuming that everything I saw on Facebook was an accurate portrayal of the normal activities of their lives. Especially because I was in the middle of sharing a day to day account through our "Happy Summer" photos.
I lived in that "assumption" until I found out that my at-one-time-close friend was getting a divorce. Thankfully, I did not find out about it on Facebook, I found out through one of my kids who is friends with their kids--you see, they were TALKING on the phone, and it came up. My day stopped. I was shocked, I had no idea there was anything out of the ordinary going on in their lives. I had not seen any comment, feeling, or notion about such an event happening so I had been living with the assumption that nothing had changed. I was friends with both the husband and the wife and I never suspected anything could be less than what I had seen their marriage to be the entire time I had known them. Now, I will admit that I have no idea what their marriage was like in their home, but the updates, photos, and statuses had stayed the same since I had seen them last-a couple years ago. Which made me question why I was relying on Facebook to keep me connected to people when a true adult will not share the full reality of their lives on there anyways.
But this wake up to the reality of their stage of life made me acknowledge how I was not honest about my life either. I don't show everyone how I yell at my kids when I have asked them to pick up the living room and I am hungry and tired and take it out on them, I don't show them the pictures of my kitchen with the dishes balanced precariously in the sink. I don't brag about how many goals my son allowed in to the net as he watched the ball roll past him.....Facebook is for sharing the best things about ourselves so that people see the best parts of us. It's an attempt to make our second life online seem better than the one we are living in person. It's my pretend life if I got to ignore all the things I am ashamed of or disappointed by. So why would someone share so openly that the marriage that they thought would last forever, just ended? Why would I expect them to?
With my new understanding about the limited relationship I had with so many people, I just didn't want to waste my time with it anymore. I had had enough, but in an effort to protect my friend (who had not shared anything about the divorce openly on Facebook) I stated the above reasons. Even in my declaration that I was tired of filtering my life, I filtered my true reasons, out of protection for my friend, but also protection of myself.
I was ashamed that after years of being close with them when we lived in the same city, I so quickly had moved on. I had become satisfied with the vague updates and photos of their normal life. I had not talked to them on the phone, had not planned a visit. I had not continued the relationship after we moved away. Hence, I was not part of the true friends who knew of the hardship they were experiencing. I had depended on Facebook to inform me of what was happening, and because I had trusted that information, I had not thought to connect on a deeper level. "I have no need to call, I know what's going on with them" Everything is just as I left it......or so I thought. I had believed the filtered honesty and found I was guilty of it myself.
When I have conversations on the phone, or in person, with one of my friends there are things that come out of the conversation that never would have been shared on Facebook, or text, or email. There is something so meaningful in true human contact. It is honest and raw, with tears and laughter. We speak in a pace that is natural. We listen and can hear the emotion in our voices. I am no longer satisfied with the pretend relationship of online communities. I want to NOT know what is going on in my friends' lives day to day, because then maybe I will MISS them and WANT to know what is new with them. Then I will call them and set up a coffee date and talk with them for hours about the little things in our family. The funny things, and hard things, the schedules and the teenagers, the recipes and the crafts. There is so much more than what I would ever tell you in a status update and I want to know more than what has filtered through the newsfeed.
Tonight's coffee: the leftovers from the 4 o'clock pot. So the cup is half as full with extra cream to fill it a bit more, but then less sugar because it already has more cream....
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
The Second Self
This past year, I went to school for the first time since I graduated high school. After enrolling for the prerequisite math and writing classes I chose a third class of my own interest: Mass Communication and Society. I thought this would be the class to get me through my boredom of the first two classes, and while it was intriguing, it proved to not be my favorite class.
I would probably describe myself as an old fashioned, young person. I am the oldest of the Millenials, those born from 1981-2000's but I don't share the same natural ability or inclination to technology as some of my peers. I remember having many conversations with my husband about how technology was making this new generation (the Plurals, those kids my children's age) stupid. In my opinion, there are key elements of character that are not being developed in Plurals and it is all the media's fault....yes, I was one of those ranting people, please don't judge me just yet.
I wanted to take this Mass Communication class to find out if my assumptions were true......or at least justify my position by learning just enough information to support my conclusion. My first day of class, I walk into a room with only 9 people, and I am the second oldest person in the room (the oldest person dropped the class two weeks later, making me the OLDEST person in the class)
So, not only am I old in this class, I am also the only digital immigrant there. (I learned this term the first week, I was born and raised BEFORE technology took over our population and media, and while many people my age have adapted quickly, I use technology the way someone 10 years older than me might). During class, we are supposed to have our smart phones on the tables at all times, because we will be required to search information online as we discuss topics. I had to timidly ask my classmates how to change the settings on my phone so that it wouldn't vibrate while being on silent...... condescending looks from my younger classmates confirmed that I didn't really belong in this class.
Our first real assignment was to go an entire day using no "New Technology". No cell phones, digital TVs, laptops, I-pods, email, DVD players...nothing. If we were to use the phone, it had to be on a land line. We had to use REAL alarm clocks not the alarm on our phone, no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, nothing. My other classmates fretted about how much they would have to change. I did not worry at all. I am just not that dependent on technology apparently. Other than not getting on Facebook for the day, my life would pretty much stay the same. We came back to class the next week and shared our experiences, I arrogantly shared that I was not affected the way they were.......[the most ironic component to this assignment is that halfway through the term, the class became an online class, how is that for being unplugged?]
A week later, we watched this video by Amber Case: We Are All Cyborgs Now. She talks in the video briefly about our "second self" the online persona that needs to be cared for, given social time with people online, fed, tended to.....and while she makes a very positive conclusion about the way technology is benefiting the people of this current generation, connecting us all, I came up with a different, drastic conclusion: I did not want a second self anymore, even the underdeveloped one I had, was impacting my life in ways I was not prepared to admit.
I didn't want to have two selves.....I wanted the real me to have an amazing first self life.....not a life that was being shared with the other half of me online. I didn't want to put little snippets of my feelings out there for people to draw the wrong conclusions from. I realized I didn't REALLY know people because they are only putting the pretty second self out there for me to see. I knew I was short changing people, there are filters I had developed as I created my second self. I had learned to be online without divulging all of my emotions, feelings, thoughts, and reactions to everyday situations. This was my way of not coming across as too......fill in the blank.
And that is what most people eventually do, filter themselves down to the appropriate posts and updates. Though we all have those friends online that don't filter ANYTHING, and we eventually unfollow them. It makes the very nature of online relationships limited. There is only so much of ourselves that can come through characters and photos on a screen before others start making opinions about our real selves based on their observation of our second self.
I wanted to experience TRUE relationships with people. I knew that I was not fully committed to anything online so I wanted to end my Facebook account and focus on my real life relationships starting with my family. Admittedly, all the caring for my second self steals from my first self kids. Just think about how when we scroll through Facebook, that is twenty minutes (at the very least) that I am ignoring my kids, because I want to know what is going on in my friends lives, who I don't talk to in real life and probably haven't seen in years, and yet I am choosing to see what is going on their lives so that I "feel connected" while not connecting with my child who is most likely sitting in the same room as me, and may even be looking over my shoulder to feel involved in whatever Mommy is looking at. Let's be honest, I probably do this for an hour, all the while answering questions about homework, schedules, when dinner would be ready.....have I started to make dinner? Here, I will make another tab and go over to Pinterest to decide what to make......Now you can judge me.
I was disappointed in myself. Here I had spent years complaining about how technology is "ruining" the development of this generation, when really it was ruining the development of my own character. I was not who I wanted to be. So, I decided to delete my Facebook account, unfriending everyone who I was connected to online so that I could intentionally connect to those people who are near to me in my first life.
I am not condemning people who have social media accounts, watch the Amber Case video above, she definitely ends on a positive note. And I know many people who use social media and it's a good thing for them. I just knew it wasn't for me anymore.
When I first announced to all my friends that I was going to be getting off of Facebook, I told them it was going to be a long process and that I was going to be deleting everyone.......so that I had nothing to come back to. You see, like I said I am old fashioned and loyalty, integrity, and honesty are important to me. And I have crazy expectations of myself and if I say I am going to so something, I better do it, or else it makes me a liar.
If I had told people I was going to take a break and come back to Facebook in a month, that would have been fine, I see lots of people do that during Lent, or the holidays, or when they are needing to reset themselves. That is just not the route for me. I know my own weaknesses and I know that I had an unhealthy part of myself that was living online. It was time for my second self to die, so that it could be recreated in a healthy manner and in a way that did not have as many (if any) relational consequences in my first life.
This blog, I type at night when my kids go to bed. My husband sits across from me at the table, writing his blog about his journey of losing weight called Leaven Leaving, and I write this. It's one less way my second self is interrupting my first self's life.
Tonight's coffee: KONA coffee my mom just brought back from Hawaii, a tablespoon of brown sugar, and half an inch of half-n-half :)
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