When you see and hear enough from a big group of people over time, like on Facebook, somebody is bound to annoy, anger, or make you feel negatively sooner or later. When there’s a big enough group of people able to see pictures and information you share about your life, like on Facebook, you probably don’t want to give everybody the same access. When I have to deal with a big enough group of people for these things, like on Facebook, I get really judgmental and lay down the law in my Facebook account and newsfeed to not only minimize all the negativity that might come out of this, but have a little fun to take control back immediate with some fun actions that have no consequence to those people, and just benefits to me.

 

Penalties

My favourite recourse on something I don’t like from my Facebook “friends” that I see in my newsfeed is assessing what I call “penalties”. Those are the things you can do when clicking or tapping on those three ellipsis dots in the upper right of the post space. Those range from hiding the post, to snoozing the poster for 30 days, hiding all from the poster if that weren’t a Facebook “friend”, or the Unfollowing equivalent of a Facebook friend, or reporting the post, which, thankfully, I have not ever had to do. Among the common penalties I like to assess are:

• Hide post for repeated comments and replies to make it appear often on my newsfeed when I check over a few days, or if I didn’t like seeing it for some mild reason.
• Snooze for 30 days for posting more than 3 times in one day, or 3 or more times on consecutive days. To be fair, I’ve been guilty of this a lot in the past year where I’ve generally posted only two days a week, on average, but when I do, I tend to do 3-4 posts of favourite stuff since the previous posting day. I’m averaging posting once every 6 days this in 2021, and have kept it at fewer than three posts each day, which I intend to carry on the rest of the year. I am currently on a no posting month in February.
• Unfollow for too many posts (worse than the 3 or more in consecutive days).
• Unfollow for too many uninteresting and/or vanity posts.
• Unfollow for just utter stupidity like denying COVID or being Trumpian without being able to defend the issue (which is often arrogance to think they know it all until challenged). The is just a one shot deal, or at most, two if I you had some half decent bond with me to start with.

These actions don’t seem like much, but they serve two good purposes. First is just a fun, momentary reaction to be able to see through my negative feelings with an action to combat it rather than hold on to it. Second is far more important, which is saving my scrolling fingers, time to sift through garbage, and phone power for time turned on as I sift through that garbage.

 

Hierarchies

With every Facebook “friend” I have, I slot them into one of five “Friend Lists” for how many posts they would generally get to see. With every Facebook post, I check my Privacy Setting for which Friend List/s would get access to it, or combinations of people and lists if the lists didn’t fully serve my purpose. I do both of these actions to not only check myself for the appropriate audience with everything I post, including if I should post it at all, but also because I’m not equally “close” to all of my Facebook “friends”, so why would I share everything with them equally? Among my hierarchies, which are named starting with a number of 1 for my closest friends, and 5 for my farthest non-acquaintances, are:

1. All – these people I don’t mind seeing all of my posts. I have about 3% of my Facebook friends on this, with 1/3 of those being extended family.
2. Most – these people get to see most of my posts, except the really personal and/or risque ones, like life drawings of nudes or sewing my designs of women undergarments, and so on. About 6% of my FB friends are on this list.
3. Distant – these are people distant enough from me I don’t want them to see most of my posts, but only occasional ones. Given only 8% of my Facebook friends are on this list, making for all of 17% of my Facebook friends are in my three “closest” circles, you can now better appreciate what I mean when I say my Facebook social circles and my real life social circles are really  different… and why I can get away with being in a fake relationship on Facebook without hardly anyone knowing any better. 🙂
4. Rare – this 66% of my Facebook friends get to see the rare post from me, which is now a lot rarer considering I only post on an average of one day per week these days. Maybe just enough for them to know I’m not dead, manically depressed, in a really bad spot, or such, if they even cared.

That sums up to 83% of my Facebook friends, which means the other 17% never see any Facebook posts from me except for the changing of profile pictures, which I can’t control who sees.

The tier my Facebook friends end up at mostly depend on how close, or not, I feel to them. However, for some, I keep information symmetry by showing them as little information about my life and such as they do about theirs, even if I might to show them stuff. Same goes with lack of interaction. In in roughly semi-annual assessments, on my birthday and at new year’s where there are times to be contemplative and get fresh starts, when I run through the lists to upgrade or downgrade people among my tiers, extent of interaction, or usually lack thereof, between they and I, on my posts and theirs, will also influence where they end up.

On these criteria, and considering my Facebook world compared to my real life world as I am in the former less, I have to be honest and say I’m a bit surprised more Facebook friends aren’t in lower tiers. Maybe something to keep in mind for the July tier reassignments. 🙂

 

 

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