If you walk away, walk away
I walk away, walk away
I will follow
–U2/I Will Follow
In reading some of YearOfElan’s other posts after seeing the viral rude Thanksgiving airline passenger deal, I came across this post about unfollowing people on social media which really clicked with me. He called it “the Unfollow Dilemma.” Elan’s take on unfollowing is that you unfollow someone because seeing all of their updates is painful. You need them gone because knowing the minutiae of what’s going on in their life is painful. I haven’t had that experience, exactly.
I have not unfollowed very many people who I know in real life. I follow and unfollow people on Twitter for various reasons, but don’t actually know most of the people I follow there. Twitter isn’t about anything personal for me, it’s more of a news and interest aggregator. Facebook is where most of my personal connections reside. There are several people I have hidden for various reasons, but I’ve only unfollowed a few, mostly because they were so offensive to me in some way that just hiding their posts wouldn’t get them “gone” enough. I don’t want them to see anything about me, either. Those people? I don’t really think of them again. They haven’t been people I’m close to, so making them virtually disappear left me indifferent.
If I unfollow someone I actually care about, it’s more likely to be because knowing what they do only by social media proxy hurts. It’s not because I know too much about what is going on with them, but because I don’t know enough. I want to know more about what is going on with them, but all I have is this sliver of a window. Not even a window I can see through. A darkened window that is all boarded up. I can see someone is on the other side, but they aren’t talking, at least not to me.
It’s not that I want them gone, but I want them to un-board the fucking window and actually invite me in the house.
As I was thinking about this, someone I’m Facebook friends with (but don’t actually know) wrote a status update saying something like this:
You choose everything in your life. Will you or won’t you is the question.
That’s pretty much it.
If you want someone to be in your life, you share yours with them and you want them to share theirs with you. Being busy or not might impact how often you interact, but it doesn’t lessen the desire to share life. What are you doing, who are you seeing, what are you feeling?
If you aren’t sharing that, then what else is there?
Maybe they want you to want to be part of their lives but don’t want to be part of yours. Maybe they just aren’t good at sharing. Maybe it’s too painful for them. Maybe they don’t feel like they have anything worth sharing. Maybe they are concerned about security. Maybe they think their lives are personal. Maybe they just don’t have time. Maybe they don’t know how to use a computer or smart phone.
Maybe there’s a reason they can’t or won’t share. Maybe there are a million reasons.
If you aren’t talking about it, it’s all just a bunch of maybes.
So you keep following and peek in through the boarded up windows, or stop following, and…what?
I don’t know.
I have trouble with maybes.
Among other things.
Just invite me in. I’ll bring booze. We’ll talk.