You know, for about a decade, everyone was pushed to share everything they did on social media. It was a mistake. It was a mistake on the scale of cigarettes and smoking inside and in airplanes and in hospitals and in schools. No one thought it was a stupid idea, and a lot of people pushed it as the only way to get jobs and show you’re a clever chimp that can internet so hard because interneting hard was the cool new thing.
Lower right is the hangover from that. Anyone I didn’t find or didn’t find me between 2008 and 2018 wasn’t ever worth connecting with. The people that did find me were nice to hear from once, and we haven’t talked ever again, despite being connected, for 10+ years.
My grandparents and their parents, etc. went their whole lives never seeing people again and not knowing what happened to them because they moved one time and they didn’t know their new address. Whole movies were about that. Elvis had a song about that. The last episode of the first season of The Real World ended with everyone moving out of the apartment, and once that landline and address no longer went to those people, it was 100% possible that those people would be gone from each others’ lives forever.
Y’all, we’re not supposed to collect and keep 27,000 casual contacts throughout our lives. It’s unnatural. Our brains are not built for it. We’re made to have a few dozen up to 100-ish close connections that mean something, including family you don’t pick.
Email some old friends you don’t text with daily. Send anyone you truly care about an email to say hi. If they respond, then great. If not, don’t worry about it. Enjoy high fidelity communications with those who mater to you.
Gen Z here. Burnt out of social media. Deleted every mainstream social media app. If you want the fastest way to never ever hear from me, it would be email. That shits incredibly overwhelming. I check my physical mailbox more than I check my email. The goal is to get away from the computer.
You know, for about a decade, everyone was pushed to share everything they did on social media. It was a mistake. It was a mistake on the scale of cigarettes and smoking inside and in airplanes and in hospitals and in schools. No one thought it was a stupid idea, and a lot of people pushed it as the only way to get jobs and show you’re a clever chimp that can internet so hard because interneting hard was the cool new thing.
Lower right is the hangover from that. Anyone I didn’t find or didn’t find me between 2008 and 2018 wasn’t ever worth connecting with. The people that did find me were nice to hear from once, and we haven’t talked ever again, despite being connected, for 10+ years.
My grandparents and their parents, etc. went their whole lives never seeing people again and not knowing what happened to them because they moved one time and they didn’t know their new address. Whole movies were about that. Elvis had a song about that. The last episode of the first season of The Real World ended with everyone moving out of the apartment, and once that landline and address no longer went to those people, it was 100% possible that those people would be gone from each others’ lives forever.
Y’all, we’re not supposed to collect and keep 27,000 casual contacts throughout our lives. It’s unnatural. Our brains are not built for it. We’re made to have a few dozen up to 100-ish close connections that mean something, including family you don’t pick.
Email some old friends you don’t text with daily. Send anyone you truly care about an email to say hi. If they respond, then great. If not, don’t worry about it. Enjoy high fidelity communications with those who mater to you.
Gen Z here. Burnt out of social media. Deleted every mainstream social media app. If you want the fastest way to never ever hear from me, it would be email. That shits incredibly overwhelming. I check my physical mailbox more than I check my email. The goal is to get away from the computer.
Based perspective on this, thank you. :)