Cartoon by the wonderful Andy Singer!

Tending Your Lists

After watching The Social Dilemma I became overwhelmed with a desire to both spend less time on FB and also to lessen the # of friends I have on there. I explained this in my 10.11.2020 The Eleven newsletter thusly:

10.22.2020: 741 FB friends.  Some observations and upsides

1. My FB newsfeed is entirely different now. It’s filled with postings from people I know. It’s also moving a lot more slowly. I still use FB Purity which allows one to customize your FB experience – for instance, I see things in the order they’re posted. Install this app and you will be a happier FB user = no advertising.
2. Having so many FB friends played into some of my weaknesses. I kept a lot of people on there thinking – ah, potential date when that was really not the case 🙂  Or, staying friends with certain celebrities – what actual good was that doing me?  I detached from a number of people who have close to 5K friends (actually, Michael Lerner who had 5,000 🙂  It’s not that I don’t love these people anymore, I just won’t see them in my newsfeed 🙂  This is true for both the people who I never met and those who I did years and years ago – old HS connections who I have no reason to stay in touch with; people who I burned with or shared a night with on the playa in 2003… All great memories and I still get to keep those, and I know that I can always find people if I want to 🙂
3. There is definitely an addictive quality to FB like they talk about in the Social Dilemma, and as I unfriended people I could feel the pressure to not do this. FB actually makes it difficult to unfriend people. There’s a way they make the actual move to unfriend someone when you’re looking at your friends from the “friends” page difficult. The pull-down menu jiggles and is hard to actually click on!  They are so clever.  They also stopped me two times when I hit the “700 unfriendings in one day” limit. I got a message that my account had been blocked and I’d have to run through a series of steps to reconnect. It was super eerie, but I suppose not a bad thing, either.
4. I also partly went through this effort to get to the other side and see what life is like for most people. I often hear from someone – you probably saw my recent important update on FB.  I never did. Never. So, perhaps now I’ll be a little more in touch with the people I’m closer with. We’ll see 🙂  I partly want to really keep moving away from FB and towards more IRL experiences – even with Covid keeping us apart.
5. FB is very useful for introducing people to one another. With a smaller group of friends, I’ll probably be able to see people I’m closer to stand out more and be able to help them more. I just noticed when I posted this blog post to FB that the people who popped up to respond were a closer set of friends than usual – and I was able to see the power of the people I’ve kept around.
6. Oooh, this means that I’ll see a lot fewer people whose birthday is today 🙂  I love wishing people happy birthday and having an email that goes to those on my list on their birthday which people love. Now, way fewer people to wade through. Love this.
7. Yeah, I think having my group of friends on FB be the ones I’m closer with is going to be a good thing. Whew, a little relief there that this wasn’t a huge mistake 🙂
8. 10.23.2020: I’m noticing a few things I hadn’t noticed before—way fewer notifications. Way fewer friends online to chat to. That part has gone from 3-500 people to 77 right now 11:30 am.
9. 10.27.2020 – I still post to FB, but I notice that the responses are from people I’m closer to – this has changed the quality of my responses.  Also, I notice my newsfeed has so much less on it, it’s a lot more attractive to check 🙂
10. 1.30.2021 – I’m segmenting my lists – I’ve written about making FB Friends lists in the past – it’s still a useful thing. Having a smaller list to look through brings me face-to-face with a lot richer collection (to me) of faces.  Reminding me who to reach out to and causing more connection through that. 
11. 1.2.23 – I’m finding I’m also taking time to send happy New Year’s greetings to those with whom I feel drawn to do that with. That’s a sweet side effect – bringing me closer to those who I do want to stay connected with – and perhaps deepening our connection. 
12. 1.2.23 – I’m probably repeating myself – but this year I’m noticing quite a few of my friends have passed away. People I really loved a lot. This gives me a moment to send them a lovely NYE note and well wishes. I like doing that. It’s been quite a day.
13. 10.19.23 – I’ve heard from close friends and relatives over the years “Well, you must have seen my important post about X?” For years, no, there was no way for me to see their important posts. So, recently, I’ve unfollowed just about every one of my FB friends. This took me a while to do, but has led to a feed that is now full of the people’s posts who I’m closest to. It’s probably more of what Facebook intends for people to experience. Since I also use Facebook Purity (highly recommended), I don’t see advertising, and also see the most recent posts first (one of the FB Purity settings that you can set). So, I’m having a much better Facebook experience after all of this cutting and pruning! Feel free to add any thoughts in the comments section below.

I’m sure I’ll add more insights to this article as I have them. I feel like I’ve just landed in a new place and I’m excited to see how it’s different. So far it feels calmer.

Downsides to doing this:

1. A thought I’ve had over the years is that when I’m older (70+) I’ll probably want to spend more time reconnecting with people who titillated me once upon a time. I just said goodbye to lots of people, so I won’t have the easily accessible group that I had 2 weeks ago to choose from.
2. My FB live concerts will not reach as many people and have the chance to spread. I’ve noticed as I’ve played some recent FB live shows that I haven’t had the bigger audience I’ve become accustomed to. Oh well 🙂
3. My business offerings might not have as wide a reach via the newsfeed as they once did. Oh well 🙂  Luckily, I’ve been building my email list like gangbusters over the years 🙂

Thanks for listening. I’d love to know your thoughts. Please leave them in the comments area below.

Happy Facebooking. Happy living. Albert

PS – Next up, same thing for LinkedIn 🙂 – 1.30.2021 – I’ve decided not to do this on LinkedIn, especially now that they’ve put together Lunchclub.

PPS – 10.23.2020 – Ooooh, under settings look what I found! More places to limit the FB monster’s reach into my life 🙂 

12.16.2020 – I was in a video discussion related to this topic with Gary Ware and Apryl Schlueter.

1.2.23 – Happy New Year – I find myself doing another culling today. It really feels very freeing. There are tons of people who aren’t using FB very much. Removing them from my friend’s list feels like a little shedding that is clearing. I recommend doing this once a  year at least.