I have to use Facebook for the dad's club I run for our kids' school. I have been searching for an easier option to communicate what we're doing and meet new members as a lot of dads in our school don't use Facebook or have sworn off it. So I totally get where you're coming from. As my time is running out in that position, I'm happy to be able to back away from Facebook for the reason I stated above. However, I do want to keep some of the content I enjoy reading. And I think that's the trick to a lot of these social media sites. Just make it where you read the things that don't aggravate you. Why spend your precious time being purposefully irritated? I realize that's a bit of making the bubbles a lot of people are using to insulate themselves and only get politics and news they agree with. But I think for my own mental health, it's better to not have these little bits of aggravation pop up and waste my time.I get where you all are coming from...FB is all braggers and complainers it seems. Oh, and advertisers, which was me. I used it almost daily to push the band - merch, gigs, new videos - and realized I was just spamming most of the time. But, with many of the gigs we booked, having an FB account was necessary to set up an event. Once the pandemic hit and I didn't have gigs booked, I finally was able to stop checking FB daily, then I only checked in once a week or so. Now I barely think about it, and yet still haven't ditched my account.
I like your approach @Chucktshoes with the streamlined friend list. I just know that once the band gets busy again I'll likely want the outreach that FB provides...but I'm very reluctant to dive back in.
I don't want to fully discuss the reasons why but I found myself comparing one of my kids who is going through a tough time right now both with school, friends, and their own mental state with the happier kid who loved school and had plenty of friends that I previously posted about on Facebook. I found myself being sad that this kid no longer exists and that's not fair to them. I think it made me realize that Facebook is all about how you want life to be and not necessarily how life really is. Nor did I want to post what was going on with us at that time because that's not fair to my kid and I don't need to have a shared misery moment. It's just my own personal issue with Facebook. But I realize there are others who either only post the best parts of their lives or post the absolute worst parts of their life (the vaguebookers who say things like "worst day ever" in an attempt to get others to respond with questions or support). Then I also realized I didn't want to know certain things about people who were my "friends" such as their personal politics, the conspiracy theories they believe in, or their desire to ignore science they don't agree with. Sure, you can hide that content but it led me to ask myself why I was even "friends" with these people. So then I removed them.
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