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FB: The Land Where You Collect all the People

RenBloggerJan 5, 2018, 6:18:30 PM
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I just had an interaction with a college acquaintance through my husband's FB (people who, more than a YEAR later, when they realize I'm no longer on their FB list, go to my husband's profile to find out where I am. #eyeroll).

He just wants me to know he's thinking of me.

When I tell him I'm mostly on Minds.com, he responds by expressing sympathy for the huge adjustment it must be, having gone from a "big on-line presence" to ...?

LOL Yeah, because not being on FB equates to internet death =D

He wants to "catch up", so I tell him that I don't use social media to update on the family and I send him the link to the doc holding our family Christmas news letter. I tell him that I'm happier without the drama of constantly pissing off people who, because we see each other away from FB, then cause IRL drama for me. I tell him that I've gone back to the old fashioned way of keeping in touch with people who are actually in my life: phone, text, and IRL visits. Missing that he doesn't qualify, and being disoriented by a switch in social media use that is foreign to him, he wants to know my phone #. I tell him I'm not going to share it on FB. He sends me his because he's not "concerned" about FB private messaging.

Sigh. Dumb sheep, but that's another blog post for another time.

He'd like to occasionally just shoot out a text telling me he's praying for me.

UGH. He wants to keep me in his collection.

I mean it's nice that he's thinking of me, and I appreciate prayers, but I could just feel my skin crawling.

This is, in part, why I left FB. I use social media like Blogs were first used: Just shooting my thoughts out into the web and watching where they land. It's more exciting when they land on people I don't know in real life.

I have long since come to the conclusion that collecting everyone you've ever know in one spot and then showing the same side of yourself to all of them at once results in, at best, self censorship, at worst, never ending drama. In real life relationships don't translate well to the internet so - and call me a revolutionary - I keep my in real life relationships running in real life and if that means I'm not in contact with people I once shared an experience with several years ago, that's OK with me.

In real life, we interact with each other accordingly. It's not hypocrisy, it's the decency of recognizing what someone else can or can not handle about you. I interact with church family differently than I interact with my family and, both of those groups, differently than I interact with my friends. That is hard enough to do on FB, let alone throwing in people I once knew years ago when I was a different person, and people I just casually know from being out and about.

Collecting all the people we've ever known in one spot and trying to interact with them all the same way at the same time is not natural.

I don't think we're meant to be collectors and keepers of people. Sometimes (scratch that, a lot of the time) we move in and out of each other's lives and when we move out, we both grow our own way and our lives aren't always able to go back and hold each other again. 

I wanted to say: Think of me (I occasionally think of him too), but you can remember me fondly without having to tell me of it. Definitely pray for me, but keep it between you and God. I don't need to know either, and you should ask yourself why you need me to know.

However, I realized that I'd blown his mainstream, sheeple mind enough for one day and, so, I'll text him soon. And, one day, a year from now, when he's thinking of me again, I'll tolerate the burdensome text, which makes him feel good, and probably respond with, "Thank you".

Because being a considerate person isn't a big deal, but gee wiz, I loath the way in which FB has caused us to have the mentality of collecting and keeping a collection of people in our lives. 

Consider this song by Sara Groves, "Painting Pictures of Egypt".

I don't paint pictures of Egypt, in my forward paths or with my past relationships. 

"But the places that used to fit me can not hold the things I've learned. And, those roads were closed off to me while my back was turned."

Auld Lang Syne isn't meant to spur us to reconnection. It's supposed to be a fond and mature recollection of appreciation for how past relationships have impacted our lives. It's a recollection of the mind, not the social media.