Social Experiment

Upon logging into facebook today, I noticed a certain someone had posted something about how they'd had enough of facebook.

This person mentioned cleaning out friends (something he does on almost a quarterly basis) and just using it to keep in touch with a few close family members and said that if friends need to get in touch, they can just call or text or email or comment on his weekly blog, or, or, or.....

The never ending stream of facebook friend info was getting overwhelming to this someone.

Which I found interesting....

Because this person posts something just about every 15mins....all day long.

Maybe not that often, but definitely a lot.

Now, I'm not knockin' this person.

He's a pretty interesting fella.

And what he posts is sometimes pretty interesting.

I'm just not sure I understand how you can be overwhelmed by the constant stream while you yourself are contributing to it so heavily.

Or why you'd announce that you're tired of facebook ON facebook.

If you're tired of facebook, don't log in to facebook.

Don't post anything for a couple days.

People really don't care if you have no status update for one day or two or three.

If you close your facebook account for a month, everyone will still be there when/if you come back.

Depending on how this experiment goes, you may or may not find out who this person is.

Shortly after reading aforementioned status update about the facebook fed-up-edness and upcoming purge, he posted 2 or 3 more articles, which made me chuckle.

Meanwhile...back at the ranch....

I thought I'd do him a favor and unfriend him.

GASP!!!

How dare I!

You know why I'm doing this experiment?

1. Because its completely stupid that the notion of being "unfriended" on facebook has become such a social faux pas.
2. And because he's right - if you're a real friend, you call, or you see each other from time to time, or you swap a couple emails.
3. If he's tired of it and I'm his friend, I'm gonna help a brother out and do my part.
4. And because I wanted to see if he'd even notice he was missing a friend during his next Facebook Friend House Cleaning.
5. And because I wanted to see how long it would take if this were to be posted and at some point he read it and figured out it was about him.

(those last 2 things are simply due to my childish curiosity of the interwebs)

Facebook is not the end all be all for relationships.

It shouldn't be treated as such.

Its not the glue that holds people together.

We could say that its the tube (that's what the internet is anyway, right? a series of tubes) that the glue comes in that makes sticking together easier. Convenient handling.

Instead of constantly consuming or constantly contributing to the endless data stream......

Take a step back.

Unplug.

Instead of always updating your status with where you are...

Just be there.

*****************

ps. as part of this experiment (the control, if you will), it should be said that this post is not to be linked to or shared on facebook.

thank you,

mgmt.