Freedom and cutting ties
26 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: life, social networking
Today I decided to download my entire Facebook profile (My Account > Privacy Settings > download profile….something like that), and began cutting the Facebook cord. I deleted albums, deleted my profile interests, and changed all privacy settings to “only me.”
Knowing I had my entire profile downloaded, I still felt a twinge of fear and nervousness because I was cutting myself off of feeling “connected” to the world.
Then, I realized, before social networks, there was never a strong urge to broadcast my every coming and going, my whereabouts, my relationship status and so on with everybody, even acquaintances or friends of friends.
What had been a jumping off ship to board Google+, where I realized I didn’t want to manage two social networks and preferred one where I could keep my circles hidden and much smaller and more manageable, I slowly discovered that the fear back into breaking these bonds with people I may never talk to again was simply just prolonging the inevitable. What I mean is, as I deleted photo albums from over 5 years ago, many faces were those I haven’t seen since college, or have fallen along the way from people I even occasionally talk to– I would have stopped knowing about their lives a lot earlier had it not been for Facebook. It’s kind of creepy and sad.
Is this life, or is this just a side effect of social networking– realizing that you will meet hundreds of people throughout life, but only a few will ever stay for life. Some people who comment in my posts are people I don’t even think I’d have coffee with again. At first there’s excitement, but you begin to realize they’re engaging in your words, and not necessarily “you.” I could be any one of 200-500 (or more…) sentences on their stream, and happen to be that one they can relate to at the moment.
Anyway, all these weird feelings, trips down memory lane and odd feeling of some brainwashing finally being lifted has got me contemplating about social networks. Given that I’ve moved away from most people I talk to these days, I’m experiencing the strange feeling of being alone once again. But I like it. There’s no pull to get immersed into other people’s lives, wishing to be in their shoes while they experience other novel chapters of life…knowing if we were all in the same room I would still wonder if they were really a “friend.” Now, the friends that I do manage to keep seeing over time, and the new ones I’ll make, will be true and with me for as long as we can mutually benefit from each other. People always seem to come and go, some longer than others, and I have faith that it will happen once again.
I’ll end this late-night rambling now. 
