WEEDING OUT

After one day and an arm sore from clicking my mouse, I realized that Facebook has become a phenomenon. During it’s early stages, it was ignored because we had Friendster , Multiply and Hi5 then. These are all social networking sites which had their own share of advantages and disadvantages. For one you can post your pictures abroad to let them know that YES, you’ve been there, or to post a picture of you and the person you are currently with to discourage anybody who would like to take him away from you, or to show them how great you look in a bikini. To some degree, some people have taken this way out of control – online fights have been started because of a post someone didn’t like, or really lewd pictures have been posted too. Sites such as Multiply has now become a “Marketing” site with almost everything being sold online.

I enjoy catching up with people, looking at where they’ve been, who they’re with or what state they are currently in. But today I spent the whole day removing “friends” from my account because I barely know them, I just don’t want to friends with them anymore or I am just so sick of their daily dose of negativity on their status.

I am a very private person and really picky with whom my friends are. Some of my friends say that it actually defeats the purpose of joining a Social Networking site because you don’t join one just to have a handful of friends, after all it’s a networking site. True but I would rather keep the people on my page who know me, who can be a good influence to me and last but not the least, people who I can have intelligent conversations with.

I admit at times, I would “spy” on a particular person’s profile and find out what they are up to or what the pictures they’ve posted can tell me, after all who does'nt? I know some people may also be doing the same thing to me – (that’s what Privacy options are for). But that is really not a good thing to do isn’t it? Why fuel my negative emotions by going back to a person’s profile who I do not like anyway? Why waste energy browsing their pictures when I could be catching up with a close friend in high school or a relative abroad who just got married?

Sometimes there is a need to weed out your online “friends”. This allows you to find out if you value them enough, to know the friends you can count on and the ones worth keeping. By removing them from your network, it removes the need for you to check them out, it also removes the stimuli to the negative emotions that you might feel every time you visit their profile. And removing that profile with the unending negative status removes the unneeded negative baggage that you might be unconsciously carrying for them.

So now, although my arm is a bit sore - because Facebook does not have a multiple delete option, I feel better because I know that the people left on my page are the ones I truly care about and whom I call my true friends.