Social media kind of sucks. Don’t get me wrong, I fucking love it. I love my twitter and my blog and my facebook (but not so much MySpace, they just. . .suck now). I love meeting people through these outlets and I love being able to keep up with friends and family, even if it’s only 140 characters at a time. I love having my own space where I can write what I want to write and post pictures and non-sequiturs. I really love it.
Sometimes, though, you have to purge. You have to go through your blogroll and ask yourself “Do I even really read this person anymore?”, look at who you follow on twitter and say “I always skip over what this person says anyway” and go through your [so-called] 400 friends and say “Do I even know this person?!”. I get that. I don’t get sad if my follower list drops from 41 to 39. It doesn’t hurt my feelings if that friend from middle school deletes me as a friend. Honestly, I wouldn’t even notice. There is no reason to get all up in arms about virtual strangers. I know who I am and who my “friends” and “followers” are does not define me.
That was until my brother deleted me as a friend on MySpace, Facebook and stopped following me on Twitter.
There is much I’d like to say on the subject, but this is one topic I think it best I kept my big mouth shut about. The last thing I need to do is drag it out in a public forum-the he said/she said brawl that is happening in my life right now. Even this post may be crossing the line a bit.
I’ve tried to be patient and understanding and strong, but I have to admit, him deleting me made me lose it a bit. I know he’s mad, but it felt like he was erasing me from his life. And in my book, you don’t erase family, no matter what. I feel like he wants to make sure everyone knows that I don’t exist. I know that seems like a paradox, but that’s how I feel. It made me angry, but no matter how angry I am, it doesn’t change anything. I am still erased.
In other news. . . .I have been thinking it’s time for another video blog. I have a few stories that would be HILAR, but I need to figure out if I blogged them before. It’s one thing to make my family listen to me tell the same story over and over, it’s not fair to do that to you other 3. I should have plenty of time to accomplish this this weekend.
I’m boring like that.
I SO know what you mean about social media being harsh. It allows people to be so passive aggressive, even encourages it. And it’s so freakin’ public! Like the guy I was casually seeing who broke things off with me by changing his status to “in a relationship” with someone else rather than actually having a conversation with me. Or my ex-husband, who’s fiancée deleted him as a friend on Facebook after a fight. Even now, I haven’t publicly declared my relationship online because I know that my boyfriend is still embroiled in some bitter arguments with his STBX and I don’t want it to ripple through Facebook until things have calmed down there.
It truly is an awesome way to stay in touch with friends. But it offers a whole new complexity to life sometimes …
Hey
I don’t see an e-mail address for you, so I just wanted to reply here. Thanks so much for your comment on my last post. That made me feel really good. I still feel unsure about the choices I’m making, even though they feel great, and your comment was nice to get. – LSL
That is some suckage. I went kind of “delete/block happy” with Twitter when I realized my Dad was following me. I’ve since put everyone back but just removed my blog link. My sister was offended even when I explained that it wasn’t anything personal to her. So I can imagine how pissed she’d be if it HAD been.