Most of the people I removed (today) were for their abuse of Foursquare, a game of sorts, that when un-customized sends a boring message whenever the enrolled phone encounters the GPS of a site that is listed. I think it's stupid and it's dangerous to tell strangers you are away from home or exactly where you are…and it’s stupid for businesses to put much time or energy into it. It’s kinda like 2 years ago, when everyone was pushing for people to follow their RSS feed—it’s a TOOL, a marketing component, not a business plan. And you wouldn’t use a hammer when you need a screw-driver.
Unfollowing or de-friending is tricky. It is what our friend Cory calls "the new cruelty" because people get offended by your unfollowing or de-friending. I feel it's uncharted territory, all of a sudden we’re inviting all sorts of strangers into our stream of consciousness. Is this a good idea? We don't know them, and yet, we're allowing them to influence us with their moods, their habits, their likes and dislikes. What if they don't have our best interests in mind? What if their addictions or their depression is contagious? Sure, they have potential to be good influences, too, but that's not what this particular blog post is about.
Sometimes the un-follow is for THEIR sake, you know you aren't good for them to be following--like, you cause them to be argumentative, or you just don't see eye to eye, but they won't unfollow you first...it's merciful to let people be free of you, I think. Also, I won’t let certain people follow me in the first place. If you don’t need to know, you don’t need to follow. As the week goes on, I am planning to do more removal of people. If I haven’t met you, you don’t live in-state, and you really actually like following me, please re-follow, and connect. I’m not really interested in having fans, so much as having friends.
It really is a new, tricky situation we are in these days. Not just Twitter, but facebook especially. I joined the 'book back in '04 when it was new and it was only open to specific networks and from Day 1 I had implemented a policy of only accepting friend request from people I knew. To this day, every single one of my 'friends', I can tell you how and why I know them, even if we don't talk anymore. But do I delete them? It was easier to do back before the "people you may know" feature showed up. Because more than once, someone has popped up in mine that I used to be "friends" with... clearly indicating that I'd been deleted. Facebook is going more and more downhill and quite frankly I only use it as a photo-sharing service anymore. Its value is nowhere near what it used to be, and it is too crowded.
ReplyDeleteTwitter, by it's nature, is designed to be more flexible. It doesn't have to be a two-way conversation, though obviously it is more fun if it is. I know there are a lot of people that I follow, that don't follow me, and at first I was kind of hurt, but eventually I learned to deal with it and moved on. Not everybody cares what I have to say... just like I don't care what everyone else has to say.
But it's that feeling of obligatory reciprocity that makes it all so very complicated. Feelings do get hurt. There's really no easy way to go about it.
I tell myself I'm going to do a Twitter/facebook purge, but I never will. I'm afraid of backlash and hurting feelings.
And unfortunately I've learned to deal with the foursquare updates, because at the end of the day, most of the ones I see belong to friends that I would miss if I didn't have their OTHER updates, as well.
It occurs to me that I didn't really have a point to any of this... just commiserating out loud, I guess.
-@kelalea