When we talk about optimizing our time spent online, we start looking for some task managers, browser plugins and other tools designed to improve our work qualitatively. But all this is not where to start. A person working on the Internet can spend from half an hour to several hours a day on Facebook* or another social network. He enters into insignificant discussions there, slides through the questionable usefulness of the content and just spends his time and a very large part of his life on it.
For myself, I made a rather radical decision to cut down every single friend and use Facebook* without them. And the secret is that you don't really lose ANYTHING really! The network is becoming what it really should have been from the very beginning. Below I will list for you the main advantages of this solution ↓
- Irrelevant information stops pouring on you. "Your friend commented here" or "Your friend liked that another friend of his liked" — this most infuriated me on Facebook*. What do I care where someone comments, if it's not my real friend's post or my personal post. Someone was outraged by the Russian march on someone's wall, and they dump it into my News Feed? No, I don't need that. Without friends (in Facebook terminology*), this never happens.
- You will no longer be added to groups. Someone thinks that he is a cool coach and starts adding all his friends to the group named after his talent. Or someone else was outraged by the flood somewhere in Russia and organized a discussion club. No, I'm not against these groups at all. Moreover, I have several of them myself. But what kind of idiot on Facebook * HQ came up with the idea that friends can add you not only without permission from you, but also so that you may not know for weeks that you have been in a particular group for a long time?
- No one will invite you to a new uninteresting page. It's simple here. No friends — no additions. Since you can only add friends. And you don't have them. Convenient!
- No one will invite you to the new super-duper viral sexy game . Well, how can you be invited if you are simply not on the "Invite friends" list?
- The events that spam you will cease to exist. Look, let's be honest! If the event is worthwhile, you will be at it. If this is some kind of trash in a coworking, restaurant or some other institution in your city, then you don't belong there. You will learn more from books, blogs, from personal communication with real people, with whom it is much better to spend an evening than in the company of uninteresting strangers.
- No one will upset you with their participation in stupid "SMM activations" anymore. And you won't upset anyone. I'm talking about that awkward moment when, in order to receive a prize or just participate in a contest, a Facebook user* has to like something and this something falls out to all friends on the wall.
- You cannot be evaluated by your "retinue" and you cannot be used. I don't like it when people evaluate me and when they make assumptions about my abilities based on the people who were my friends. And it also pisses me off that half of those adding friends did it only because I know someone and they just needed a way to get to this or that person.
- Inconvenient truth. We work, relax, hang out in the companies of friends and their acquaintances. All these people are added to friends after a simple handshake. They can become such on a par with a school friend and a wife. And I don't like it. I sincerely admire our partners and just can't deny them virtual friendship. I really enjoy doing this! I just honestly don't want to think about it every time. "What if I refuse friendship?", "Won't she think I'm an arrogant jerk?" I got tired of it and I just stopped it.
- No one will ever be able to add you as a friend. If you delete all friends, and then enable "Allow friendship requests only from friends of friends" in the settings, then a logical "magic" will work and no one will be able to send you such a request. It's really fun :)
- No one will pull you into the new super-duper app, in which your Facebook*-friends are sucked in and you just need to push the buttons and invite anyone. You know about a cool app not when your friend bites on a beautiful icon during a "toilet surfing" on the App Store, but when a thoughtful columnist of a Hacker or another blog looks at the app and advises you. Love your attention, don't spray!
- You can now finally ban comments on your posts. Oh yes, commenting can only be allowed for friends... which you don't have.
- You are no longer influenced by what your friends like, you choose your own content.
- Facebook's advertising power* ceases to be a power for people like us. Oh, do your friends like Jameson whiskey? Do you like to fly Air Berlin? Do they like hipster parties in coworking? I am very happy for them ;) I'm glad for you that you know this and that Facebook* knows this and knows that you know. He knows a little less about me now, and that's fine. Advertising has become irrelevant, it does not distract me and I can ignore it. And every click on it brings a lot of pain to brands, as I have become more expensive. I am mutually pleased to meet you, dear money burners. Take a better look at what a fantastically cool and smart audience we have here! Stop burning money, it infuriates your target audience.
Isn't Facebook * "better with friends"?
No! He's worse with them, because you don't need to be friends on the Internet, you need to read the right content here. And here's how to do it exactly on Facebook*:
- Rejoice at the Follow function! You choose a person and just start reading it with no strings attached. He posts news and photos — you see them because you follow him. You post something, he doesn't see anything until he catches you. We are all different and there are only 10 people in this world with whom I accept mutual Friendship. The other 100,500 people are insanely interesting to me, but I don't want to know everything about them. By the way, enable the ability to follow you, because by default this feature is disabled.
- Subscribe only to the right pages. Conduct an audit of what is littering your News Feed. Believe me, all these SMM activities have really littered your subscription list. And because of the new Edge Rank on Facebook* you don't get what you need, but beer and trade brands still make their way and make you laugh with the hands of young SMM talents.
- Disable group alerts. In the group settings, set the notify only about friends' posts setting. You don't have them, remember?
- Check Inbox/Other. Yes, most of the messages from Facebook* will now fall into Other. Just drop by once a week and you won't miss anything. Help to reach you, for example like this.
- Enjoy! News from those you subscribe to, comments only if you want it yourself, a few important pages without content cuts. And also add here the absence of any "recommendations", no involvement in posts that you just liked, no mentions on photos and in posts. Harmony...
You will get a real, but only full-text Twitter for visuals who love photos and videos.
Preparation
Before adopting this paradigm of Facebook consumption*, if you are interested, you need to prepare a little.
- Write the news that it will be "hot" and warn that you can now be read by subscribing using the Follow button.
- Activate the opportunity to follow you.
- Make the settings I wrote about above.
- Redo the Cover and describe that you do not accept friend requests, that you can be followed and where you should write.
- Delete all friends.
- Start living!
If you care about the purity of the information environment in which you live, then I ask you to distribute this material in any available way.
Added: By the way, the writing of the chapters of my book "Doubt" has been completed, in which I will tell you comprehensively about what we have done with ourselves, our work, life and our bodies and how to fix it before it's too late. You can subscribe to updates here ↓
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