The Anti-Social Media

So I’m on Facebook, but I don’t exactly have a lot of friends. Seven as of this writing, to be exact. I dumped 2 last week. I guess nine is a crowd.

I’m enthusiastic about social media, in theory. I just find Facebook friendships more difficult than RT- do the kids still say that? Maybe its my age. I do a little better on Twitter and Instagram, although I recently noticed that all my Insta likes were from the same 3 or 4 people. Wish I hadn’t noticed that.

My tweets are just my inner monologue typed into an app. Before Twitter, I’d just think these things, maybe smile for a moment, and they’d be gone. Now people can be called on the carpet for expressing some random thought. Even deleting tweets doesn’t help. It can and often will be discovered and used against you. And by you, I mean Trump.

But Facebook? I have to share my life. Document it and offer it up to the world. Will my life measure up to yours, or theirs? Maybe you’re young, cute and popular. Maybe you’re clever, whacky, or going through some tough time, and people want to be there for you.

I was very active recently when my partner, Bob, fell ill. Facebook allowed me to give updates on his condition, all in one location. How’s Bob? Follow him on Facebook- I took charge of his account cuz that’s where all his friends and relatives were. I kept people informed and posting it helped me make sense of what was happening.

But full disclosure: I’m not a fan of full disclosure. I was shocked to find that people would intrude on my privacy, ask rude questions, make unreasonable demands, and offer advice as if I was a complete idiot and they had found exactly what Bob needed. I confronted people several times for overstepping and lost a few friends on Bob’s behalf. You can’t imagine the guilt I felt fighting with Bob’s friends, justified or not. Luckily he was none the wiser.

Bob’s gone now, as is his Facebook account. I adored and miss Bob, but I just had no interest in being the one who keeps his memory alive in the mind of others by maintaining his page. Facebook will convert it to a tribute page if you wish, but I just got rid of it. Funny thing is, I had a few conflicts with his people even after he died. So the page died shortly after.

On my page, I made a point of not being the courteous receptacle of Bob’s well-wishing and often well-meaning friends. All those people who looked me up, sent a friend request, and wanted to be there for me because Bob was so important to them; I denied their requests. I unfriended anyone who was mean to me or overly familiar, and weeded people out who flooded my timeline with their crap or worse yet were unresponsive to communication. My personal page was a giant middle finger to the sentimental cling-ons.

The people I want to connect with on social media, my favorite people in the world, are too much like me. They and I like to fly under the radar. The kind of person who doesn’t even come up on a Google search. For the longest time I didn’t want my face or my name on my accounts. I haven’t had a phone book listing in decades. I didn’t want to be found. As a result, nobody found me. Now I try to find my friends, and same deal. They fly under the radar.

So I’m a widower now. My name is on the lease, the utility accounts, my mailbox. I’m searchable now. I even have real selfies on my social media accounts. I’m optimistic about social media, and don’t fear it. Maybe I’ll start friending some more people on Facebook. What have I got to lose? I’m pretty sure I recently lost just about everything important to me. No place to go but up.