How to Use Social Media and Keep Your Friends

The end of the year is the ideal time to simplify your life. I do it by unfriending and unfollowing people who make my social media life insufferable. Like the Sword of Griffindor, I only take on that which makes me stronger. To avoid my purge I urge all people everyone to have some good will towards, well, everyone and use social media appropriately.

Facebook

This is probably the most ill-used platform and so I begin here. Check out this link from the HuffPost first (it's pretty exhaustive and totally on) before I add my two cents (which actually is worth much more when you consider the value of the relationships you will save by adhering to my guidelines and the aforementioned link). Use the following "rules," if you will, to give me and those like me less to judge about you.  

1. Facebook is not a storage facility, y'all. It is inappropriate and annoying to post recipes ever or memes ad nauseam. You are crowding my feed with minutia that I and, I dare say, you will never look at or refer to.  This is not the place.
2. If your feed shows the same viral video from lots of your friends, you probably don't need to repost it. It's filling up their feed too and now y'all are filling up mine. Thanks zero, and that's no thanks. If you must post a video find a video no one has seen and post that - then you'll actually be adding to my life. 
3. No political messages. Just stop. 
4. If you want people to enjoy your presence on Facebook act like a oft-followed celebrity. These celebrities post with purpose. Their content is usually generally informative or entertaining. They don't post inside jokes, tell long stories, talk about super private things, fish for sympathy, or talk about anything negative. 
5. Brevity is your friend. If I have to click "see more" you should have blogged about it. If you made three or more "." the post is way, way too long.
6. You don't have to post all the photos because I'm astute and I get it with just a few. Don't post photos everyday unless you can't write and that's the only way you can communicate.  
7. If you just want one person to see something, post it to their page. Don't post it to your page and tag them. Or better yet, email them. 
8. When you are having a private moment like, say you're in labor, feel free to enjoy that moment and not post at all. 

Now some, not all, of these rules can be violated on other social media. I shall explain below how you can violate #1 via Pinterest, #5 via blogging, and #6 via Instagram. 

Twitter

Twitter is for people who just like to whip out short statements. I have a hidden Twitter account where I keep all my snarky comments that I can't say in real life because people will hear me. I do follow quite a few people and my favorites are entertaining, and the funnier the better. The ones I unfollow are the ones who violate Facebook rules #4 and #6. I also unfollow anyone who just tweets links, has too many photos (because they require an extra click to see the photo), or is boring. 

Instagram

Instagram is awesome if you want to post photos every day. I really enjoy some of my Insta friends who post photos of their lives several times a day. The only caution with Instagram is that if you are posting multiple photos from the same event use a collage - otherwise you clog my feed and I will drop you. And probably talk about you behind your online back. 

Also don't post photos about wishing you were somewhere from you past, like a vacation. To me this is just a way for you to post more about the vacation or brag about it way after the fact. It's like Reuben Studdard trying to get famous again and basically says, "Yeah, I got nothing today." 

Pinterest

Pinterest is a way to visually bookmark pages on the internet but most people use it to accumulate current content, which is totally fine. In fact, if you need to accumulate (and I have that need too) this is the way I would prefer you do it and this is how we can have a win-win on Facebook rule #1. Pin all the recipes you can see. Pin all the adorable quotes you can see. Pin all the "red georgette blouses" you can see - but know I'll unfollow that board because you obviously have a project going that no one but you cares about. But that's what this site is for and I understand that. 

Blogging

When you have something to say, say it with a blog. This is where people who love you (3-5% of your Facebook friends) can gather and look over your life and hear all your wonderful ideas and look at all those baby pictures (again, nobody was ever hurt by a collage). 

I hope that we can all love each other just a little more at this holiday season by remembering that everything has a place and everything should be in it's place. I love you more already.