Who is secretly watching you and cheering you on?
Last night I posted on FB that I might be quitting. I know a lot of people hate on FB and some are quitting now because of free speech concerns. I get it, but I also feel that the problem is less with FB and more with the way we rely on it.
That’s a topic for another day. My main problem with FB (aside from data collection) is how much the algorithms control what we see and how everything seems to fit into the category of politically charged or meaningless. I don’t want to get into debates with people who don’t want to hear others out. I don’t care what side they are on.
Where are the fucking adults?
That’s all I keep thinking when I see discussions on Twitter and many FB posts. I am blessed to know a lot of people who are into sustainable lifestyles and focus on positive contributions to the world, but it seems like during an election or some big political debate, the algorithms will make sure to do their best to bring me into the madness. Now Group posts are all being promoted by the algorithm but most groups are either full of spam, full of people who are triggered, or full of rules where these topics aren’t allowed to be discussed. I don’t want to talk about politics but I don’t want it to not be allowed either.
I just don’t have any fun at Facebook. I feel under appreciated and unseen and don’t learn much or gain much from it.
I’ll keep it for now because out of 1000 “friends” there are actually 200-300 people I’d like to remain in contact with and until I have the time and energy to organize all that, I don’t wanna cut them all off.
Maybe I’ll make a contact book slowly over a few months.
Anyway, when I announced that I might quit, few replies (it was probably filtered out of their feeds, don’t want people to see others quitting the platform) but I got a message from a high school classmate.
“Don’t quit!”
I hadn’t talked to her since high school, but apparently she was lurking and she told me that I was one of just a few people who she could relate to on FB and she felt silly for waiting so long to tell me.
I almost cried. It’s not like I’ve never felt that I have a positive impact on others. I feel that I’ve helped a lot of people in my life. It just feels like the effort I’ve put in to try and make this world a more awesome place is much larger than the result sometimes, and that I’m always taking to the same 5-10 people, or that I need to spam myself out to the world in order to reach anyone new.
It got me thinking...if she’s watching, there could be others. It made me realize that even when we don’t manage to change the world, we still may be a vital part of a support network that keeps things from getting worse. It got me thinking that even if I don’t manage to change much, maybe one of those 5-10 loyal friends will, and that I helped them through a tough time when they nearly gave up.
And I still got a few more decades to whip this place into shape.
It also helped me realize how many potential allies there are everywhere and they are often not who they think they will be. Sometimes your best friends turn out to be way further than you think, and someone you overlooked was probably on your side all along. They just didn’t know how to tell you.
You could say we were friends but we were never that close. We always got along and were part of the same crowd of misfits, but kind of at opposite ends of the group. I think we were both kind of shy and so both of us kind of stuck with the people who knew better in the group.
I wonder who else is out there cheering me on or appreciating me without saying anything.
“It’s not right to keep nice things you think about ppl to yourself!!”
I’ll delete the app but keep my profile...for now
Now I’m inspired to take my 10-30 minutes a day of social media feeds and put it towards messaging people I miss or could have talked to more and getting their contact information.
I’ll stay on Twitter and Instagram a little while longer to help promote the Natural Medicine account to my friend. There but that is it! I was hoping to promote my music or classes or fiction but I honestly think I can do the same through direct contact with people because I already know a ton of people.
I’ll probably move all my other activity outside Hive to YouTube so I don’t have to scroll through a feed and I can elaborate on anything I want to say, rather than trying to turn it into a catch phrase of as few words as possible... and then I’ll send a link to that channel to anyone who is interested.
I’ll bring anyone interested onto Hive and Natural Medicine until none of us need any of those old platforms anymore.
Maybe someone is watching you and rooting for you too. Maybe you have impacted people and haven’t realized it at all. Maybe you have more allies than you know. Or maybe someone you appreciate has no idea you feel that way.
Only one way for them to find out....
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Facebook purity is good for fixing up fb
Site still sucks but at least the feed is chronological
thanks for sharing...iduno even know if its worth it, i kind just wanna spend more time in 1 on 1 or group messages and at hive. I may check it out htough
Oh my love and hate rel with FB. People may be susceptible to getting validation from these people on social media. But it is true that it is up to us to have some sort of self control and like you said before, try not to crave for attention.
Apparently I cannot post the same way on FB as I do on Hive. In the past, I think I've lost some FB " friends " due my uncontrollable urge to post triggering and antagonizing stuff lol.
right? I just want to troll everyone at Twitter and FB. i don't feel that here ever....almost ever
I didn't read too much of your post, sorry I'm one of those impatient types, but I wanted to click over because as soon as I saw your headline, My mind immediately said "Probably My FBI guy". LoL.... funny how we joke about things like that in our head sometimes... Anyways.. Off to read the rest of your post now. ^>^ have a wonderful day, thanks for taking the time to post this and trigger a joke in my head. ;)
Well, you know.... I aim to trigger ;-)
Where I come from, I remain a Facebook holdout to the very end; this even extends to any app of theirs that isn't Mapillary. (Yes, Virginia--FB recently bought the open-source counterpart to Street View.) Elected to use Google+ back in the day--never regretted it. But G+'s closure forced me to sign up for Steemit, precursor to this spunoff platform.
Well I have to thank Google for bringing you here by accident :-D
Officially by circumstance, rather. Researched my where-to options during G+'s twilight, decided on STM, and you know the rest of the story...
Speaking of recently gone Google products: Plus successor Shoelace tripped over in the wake of COVID-19, while GPlay Music was replaced months later by the leaves-much-to-be-desired YouTube Music (to cut costs on licensing). (Can anyone sat "jump the shark"?)
And that one way is to speak up. Tell someone how much you appreciate them and their efforts cause only keeping that in mind will not help either of you.
If your high school friend didn't open up after a long while, you probably would have been long gone and you might not have even noticed the person again.
So in most cases, always speaking out our minds helps.
You don't only cheer people in secret but you also do that in open. You can't tell how many will be encouraged by that simple act.
You are talking about 1000 Facebook friends? I am talking about 4000+ friends on Facebook that I had left in that space. Right from the start I never liked Facebook, not for any reason but I wasn't just the social type, I was dragged to Facebook by a friend who begged me to open an account. As for Instagram, I recently opened the account in December last year, but I haven't even log in since then.
lol 4000! do you add every shop owner and their family? party every night? do business on facebook?
Yeah, she cheered me up and also opened up communication after almost 15 years of not speaking :-D
Hahaha. It feels like I added the entire generation 😂
I don't do any business.
I just got too many friends requests and I did Mass Acceptance 😂
Oh no! So you got the stalkers and the robots following you. How many creepy guys send you messages a day?
I mean, who isn't watching you. You don't have to quite if you're unsure about it. You can always temporarily suspend your account. I do that quite frequently when I have work or school work to deal with. Plus all that stuff can get quite annoying what with the advertisements and everything else.
Yeah, i might do that if things get weird enough. For now I think I'll just delete the app so i don't check it when I'm outside.
Facebook,just like many other social media, is already loosing it's ground since people became aware of other places that they can put in the same effort and get rewarded for it.
This doesn't mean that Facebook does not reward those that patronise it. After all, they get the LIKES and they also get to throw banter every now and then but you & l know that life is too short to be spent in that type of arena.
Personally, the last time I made a post on Facebook was about 3 years ago. All the posts I've made there are not up to 15 despite the fact that I started using it in 2012. The only thing that makes me to leave the App on my phone is because it can prove to be an easier way to reach out to all the people that have crossed paths with in this world. I personally know upto 1000 people on my followers list and the rest are probably people that joined started following me for reasons that are best known to them.
The lady that opened up to you really have a point because you have a way of impacting people and taking up roles once you see the chances of affecting people positively with it. The same thing applies to many people in many places where they are making efforts to create impact.
Not many people would be able to open up in order to tell good doers how far thay have played out in making them whom they are today but be rest assured that the good deeds that people do for the benefit of others will are always in the heart of these beneficiaries.
Well Done ✅
I never really liked the feed though it was alright before the algorithms. I used to get 30-50 likes on a post, and after I posted 2-3 links related to Julian Assange, my likes changed to 2-5 per post. I don’t think the people in my feed hated Assange. I think I lost the algorithms favor because of those links, perhaps because they have such content on a grey-list or perhaps because my friends don’t post similar content and they saw it as inconsistent.
I will continue using messenger to contact old friends but I’ll only be using the Facebook app to promote hive in groups now
I'm also considering leaving Facebook for the same reasons. I'm looking for good alternatives. In any case, I've also found out over the years that lots of people see me without necessarily approaching me. It's mostly an interesting piece of information for me, but always useful to keep in mind.
CommunityIIDiscord
I bet you have a lot of secret fans though, make sure you get their contact info first