Prune and Purge

I rarely go on Facebook anymore. I spend most of my social media time on Instagram and even then, it's mostly looking at stories. I post pretty much only on stories, but I have them feed over to Facebook as well. Because my mom lives there. But in terms of posting or reading updates, I almost never do. If I have a notification, I'll open the app and usually read the top post, check my notifications, and leave. 

Since I'm barely there, Facebook has a hard time finding things to notify me of. For a while it was notifying me when a friend posted, but that felt like overkill to me. I mean, if you have your dumb algorithm, at least let me be victim to it. So I started marking those notifications as "Turn off notifications about XXX's updates." I still let myself be notified of about four people. One of them is, yes, my mom.

Eventually Facebook ran out of people I know and started sending me notifications for people I am "friends" with but have no idea who they are. I turned off notifications for all of them. I have 743 Facebook friends. Honestly, in my life, I have maybe ten friends and fifty acquaintances. I'm a solitary person.

I recently got a spate of new friend requests from people who are friends of friends and accepted most of them, the exceptions being when the friend that connects us is someone who is a total mystery to me. But then I started thinking about how I post stories about my life and my kids and maybe complete strangers aren't the best audience for that. So I am going to go through my friends list and unfriend anyone who's name I don't recognize.

I feel a little bad about this. I mean, most of these people are in the autistic community and are nice folks and the last time I sort of halfheartedly did this, I got a couple messages from people asking why I unfriended them, which was sort of mortifying because I had no real good reason.

But this time I will be strong. And let's be honest, how many of these people will even notice I'm gone? And if they notice, how many will give a shit?

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Well that was a thing. I have 605 friends now which is way more than I really have, but eliminates people whose names I do not recognize at all. Some of these people I friended after maybe one interaction and the relationship didn't continue. Some are bloggers from the days of old who I never interact with and maybe don't even remember who exactly they are. Some are folks from my Peloton community who have fallen off my radar.

It is entirely possible that I deleted someone without meaning to, but for the most part, if I could connect a name with a face and an interaction, I kept them. That said, I am faceblind and have a terrible memory for names, so if you hear from someone who is really offended that I unfriended them on Facebook, just tell them that I am a dingbat.

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Feeling motivated. Now that the purge is over, I might go back through and prune a little bit.