Social MedIa isn't the best way to make friends. In fact it is a good way to make enemies.
When I first started my Facebook account I did it just for fun.
I wanted to keep in touch with relatives and family members at first.
I loved looking at family pics they sent to my Facebook wall.
Then I began later writing for pay per writing sites such as Yahoo! Voices and later Bubblews and HubPages. Then I was told that I could share my posts with my friends at Facebook and Twitter.
The reason I did this at first was I actually thought it would be a way of sharing my article writing and computer art and photography with others who liked and followed me on these writing sites to keep them in my loop, so to speak. Then I began to notice some of my family and relatives who had me listed as a friend on Facebook at that time, shared posts by people outside of my circle of familiar people.
When I liked a shared post on my Facebook Timeline, They might recriprocate with my like by sending a friend request. I ended up getting several hundred such requests until I began to realize that I had well, too many friends on Facebook that I knew I could never interact with because of the realistic aspect of it all. I had too many friends on Facebook who I did not know, who were connected to at least one or a few other friends who were directly or indirectly connected to those of my list of main friends at the beginning of my Facebook friends list.
I have read many articles online lately that tell me that Facebook ruined their lives. The thing that friends who are actually not your friends at all, are bullies, flamers and stalkers hiding behind the mask of their Facebook profile image on their profile page. They could be 80 year old prison lifers pretending to be 30 year old business men or women misleading you every step of the way. There's no way to verify this information.
Worse than that is, some people just like to bully other people and use the social media method to do it and get away with it. It reminds me of the graffiti on the bathroom stalls of school and public restrooms in most retail stores. The profanity you see written there is as ugly as it gets.
So, if you were to have a friend on Facebook but get into a private chat with them and suddenly end up in an argument, well it only takes a few seconds to type in something you would likely live to regret forever after.
The same thing happened to me with a step child. He is an adult. My wife's 3rd born son, who called up our number on a Sunday, just to say, "Oh, you actually answered the phone." Before I tell you what I said in reply to this, we use an answering machine to screen unwanted callers. It's because we can't afford the extra charges the telephone company wants us to give for Caller ID services. Then there are certain factors such as paying for long distance calls and an answering machine engages then you might have to pay a toll charge for the time you were on the line or not. So many of the calls from my wife's son could have been hang up calls, because of the cost of leaving a message is registered as a completed call long distance and therefore my step son might be the guy who did this hang up calling so that might be why he said, Oh, you actually answered the phone. So instead of thinking first before opening my mouth, I replied, "You don't have to get all bent out of shape just because I usually let my answering machine pick up calls, and before I got the chance to finish the explanation he said, "Okay then, goodbye." He hung up on me.
Then I go to Facebook and see that he is online and his chat window is active so I attempt to text message him. I tell him that I apologize for making him angry and so on, but within a few seconds the window has a message for me, "You can not reply to the messages in this window." I then went to my step son's Facebook page and I was no longer listed as a friend on Facebook. He had unfriended me, blocked me and pretty well wrote me off. In just a few minutes it took to put me on his black list, he erased over 20 years of history of my posts and interactions on his Facebook wall.
The thing is, I managed to let his daughter know that her grandmother wanted him to call her. But last night she had two phone calls on her cell and they were from him but the number she called back to return the call was directed to a person who didn't know him. Who did have the same number he placed on her missed call listing. His name was on that number but the woman on the other end of that number knew nothing on earth about my step son, as if he managed to forge a false number when he called and for this reason I suspect he borrowed her phone probably at a bar and she just forgot but still if a stranger uses your phone to make a personal call wouldn't your name not theirs appear on the caller ID on your cell?
The mystery continues. Now I'm on my step son's Black List and I don't care because if he wants to unfriend me on Facebook for giving him hell just over the way he talked to me yesterday about using an answering machine to screen my calls, so be it. I need a life. I need my breakfast, my hot coffee and I believe I will abandon Facebook one day or limit my friends list to those of you here and the few at myLot and my sister and her children's families. Those who appear as friends who have essentially unfriended me because of one reason or no reason I need to thin my list down to a manageable level or it will end up taking all of my time and that would prevent me from having a life.
Comments
MegL wrote on September 5, 2016, 10:21 AM
Many people have found Facebook a very unsocial medium, along with other social media too probably. I actually have 2 accounts, though you are not "supposed" to. One is for my personal life and I have only about 6 "friends" on there and one is for my online life. I don't mind how many friends I get on there. I do my best to be polite and friendly at all times, whichever account I am on. And I also choose to remember that (a) everyone is entitled to their own opinions and they will probably not be the same as mine and (b) silence is golden. This means that if your opinion differs from mine, I may make a comment, or not but it will not be controversial. I may well provide correct FACTS if I believe your facts to be wrong and I will just ignore a post if it's so far out of my comfort zone that I do not even want to answer it. i don't think I have ever blocked or unfriended anyone but a couple of people have unfriended me, including a close relative, though she has now refriended me! PS, it's also a great timewaster. I try to check mine only once or twice a day and stay away from it the rest of the time.
1VinceSummers wrote on September 5, 2016, 12:11 PM
Sometimes "family" can be the most trial-some folks out there.
1lookatdesktop wrote on September 5, 2016, 7:39 PM
I feel the same about that.
lookatdesktop wrote on September 5, 2016, 7:40 PM
I just spent a good half hour there just now. I will now join my wife and watch the movie, "The Get Away" with Kim Bassenger and Alec Baldwin. I can't spell names too well. Hope your day went well. I am off to T.V. land!