Sunday, August 27, 2017

Copypasta from my Bookface wall...

"One of my projects for this week is to seriously get my friends list under control.

It's not a personal thing, it's just that having huge bunches of people I don't know from Adam's house cat on my personal FB timeline seriously dings its utility for me.

I keep a separate "View From The Porch" page for Blog-related stuff and try and stay active there, so it's not like I'm banishing anybody to the Outer Darkness.

But if we don't know each other face-to-face and/or haven't interacted a bunch online on forums and such over the years and/or are not both in the industry and need to know each other for professional reasons, then don't take it personally...

...and I say that knowing that each time a friend has done this, a bunch of people have taken it personally and weeping and drama and butthurt has ensued, and the desire to avoid that has caused me to put this day off for as long as I possibly could."

I originally got a FB account in 2010 because I needed one for a gig I took. I didn't actually plan on using it for anything other than that one work-related page, and so I accepted every friend request pretty much willy-nilly. It wasn't until I was a couple years into the FB experiment that I realized that this could have been a potent and useful thing if I'd had a bit more continence with my friends list.

I need to roll up my sleeves, "unfriend" a bunch of people (which wouldn't seem half so toxic an act if FB hadn't chosen to trivialize the word "friend") and then tag everybody left as "family", "close friend", "industry peeps", et cetera.

I'd like to have a way to let, say, my friends in West Dakota know "Hey, I'm in town if anybody wants to meet up for a toddy," without telling the entire damn internet "Hey, Bobbi's home alone this week and the house'll be empty during the day!" and Facebook is supposed to be exactly that tool.
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