Although I’m addicted to twitter, I do still use Facebook – mainly as a way of keeping in touch with family and friends, or people who have played a special part in my life. I make it a rule never to accept anyone who I’ve never actually met (if they want to talk to me they can find me on twitter. I don’t see why they need to see photos of my family.)
But a mistake I made a few years ago was accepting friend requests from people I’d gone to school with, who really, I didn’t like very much when I was 13, 14, 15 or 16, and had even less in common with *cough cough* years later. And also when I first started mummy blogging, accepting requests from bloggers I didn’t really know. I am by nature a cat person – I want to know why I should like you, rather than a dog person, who wants everyone to like them. So accepting requests from what amounted to strangers went completely against the grain for me. (If you’ve sent me a friend request and I’ve ignored it, this post explains why.)
The truth was, I didn’t want any of these people commenting on my status, or my timeline. I wasn’t interested in their lives, and I didn’t want them to be interested in mine. And I also felt there were certain things I couldn’t write on my status at all, which is ridiculous. After all, it is supposed to be my facebook page.
So on Saturday, I finally did it. I had a Facebook purge. I got rid of anyone who I’m not interested in. Does that sound harsh? Well I don’t suppose for a minute they’ll miss me. I can’t imagine I brought that much light into their lives.
The best thing about it is that now I’m seeing the people I want to see in my timeline, which is exactly how it should be.
*Have you had a Facebook purge – and was there any comeback? I’d love to know.
I haven’t had a Facebook purge – but that’s because I only have family and close friends on there. I like to share photo with my family in Australia and I don’t want casual acquaintances or people I hardly know seeing them. I like to think of myself as being selective, rather than being Billy No Mates. As you say, there’s always Twitter for the colleagues and people I don’t know so well.
I have subscriptions set up so those who ask to friend me and I don’t accept just see any posts I select to be ‘public’. Others I accepted in the past I haven’t unfriended, just set to ‘restricted’ so that they, too, only see any posts set to public. Likewise, I set them not to show in my timeline and those I do want to hear from, I set to receive notifications. This way I didn’t need to unfriend anyone, but with the new follow feature, I don’t now accept new people I don’t know but they think I might have done- they just automatically become followers.
Ooh you’ve just reminded me I need to do the same. Thanks!
Ooh this really rings true. Before I set up my English Mum facebook, I also became friends with people I didn’t know. I now save that one for blogging aquaintances etc, so need to go back and purge my personal one. Thanks for the nudge! x
I had two for a while, but I struggled with people thinking they could friend me on both. I want to cut mine back to people I actually know and want to keep up with, and get rid of some of the people that I don’t ever talk to. Maybe it’s time to set up another one. Hrmm.
Love your cat person analogy though, Liz. I am definitely cat not dog. I reject loads of friend requests on FB because I don’t know the people in real life.