I had a long talk with a good friend the other day about the need to have more friends on Facebook/Twitter/etc. and what it means to have more friends. We concluded that there's something instinctual about the desire to make your tribe larger. Our ancestors oftentimes survived by the size of their tribe and so we now continue to carry this base instinct to have a larger group of friends, family, and acquaintances just in case a saber tooth tiger decides to roll up and try to eat one of our babies.
I've decided that I'm much more interested in having deep meaningful relationships with a few people that are extremely important to me than to have lots of tangential friendships where we bond slightly over a delicious looking cheeseburger that I like. Because of this, I'm starting to use Facebook much different, I've removed all of the people that I don't talk to routinely unless I'm going to make a conscientious effort to improve our current relationship. Before doing this I had 316 "friends" on Facebook and I've now carved that down to roughly 40 people.
Will this get me to use Facebook differently? I hope so. I'd like to think of Facebook as an ongoing party of my most cherished relationships where I can jump over there to encourage and share in memories. I'd like to use it as a congregate of opinions that carry merit and where I'm open to the criticism of my ideas. I hope that I'm able to use it as a place to grow with my friends instead of a place to "improve my reach" or "promote a product".
I've you're reading this and we're no longer friends on Facebook it isn't at all because I hate you as our culture would have you believe. It's just because we don't talk often, if you'd like to be my friend again just let me know.
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