A couple of days ago I saw some guy complaining on a friend of mine’s latest Facebook status. He was moaning that she updated too much and that he ‘got the message’ that she was at university and happy with her man. It riled me up. I even went as far as to actually say my piece on the status:
If you don’t want to read someone’s statuses then there is an easy way to stop it. I do get annoyed when people complain about ‘how much someone else updates their Facebook/Twitter etc…’ or complains about what they say. No-one is forcing anyone else to read anyone else’s social media updates. And with that I’ll disappear back into the ether.
Yeah. The thing is our presence on social media isn’t there (in my opinion) to keep all our friends and anyone else who might be reading entertained. It is just another outlet for us to express our thoughts and emotions. I remember once someone wrote about me that she found my journal postings boring and therefore decided that she didn’t want to know me any more unless I became more interesting. That really pissed me off as it was my journal – my diary of my life and who was she to tell me what subjects I should write about to keep her entertained?
I don’t think it’ll come as any surprise that we haven’t spoken since.
If someone came on to your blog and said that they found it boring it would be a bit of a kick in the teeth but it was also be disrespectful. No-one forces anyone to be friends with anyone else on social media and if you don’t like what people you are friends with or who you follow on twitter then defriend them or stop following them. It’s simple. Heck on Facebook you can even mute their updates so they don’t show up in your feed. It is really quite simple to avoid other people on the internet. In fact it is one of the easiest things to do in the world – avoid someone on the internet.
So I implore you – if you get annoyed at the length or the number or the style of someone’s Facebook posts then instead of calling them out on it – just quietly mute them if you still want to be friends with them or you are nosy enough that you want to still be able to find out what they are up to with one click. If someone tweets too much then stop following them.
People (in general) don’t perform on social media at the behest of others. My twitter feed is used more than Facebook as I use it to throw out my thoughts as and when they pop into my head. It is more of a debate setting than Facebook. I use Facebook in general to keep friends more up to date about what is going on in my life. There is nothing that I’d say on twitter than I wouldn’t say on Facebook but the same can’t be said the other way round. That is just my own personal preference but we all use social media in different ways. One thing though is our social media is not there for the sake of others. It just isn’t. It is all of our little homes on the interweb and if people don’t like it then maybe they shouldn’t come into our homes…
