Somewhere you belong

First of all, I apologize for the Linkin Park reference. Some of you have become numb by now. In the end, what I’ve done is make you faint, but I’m working on breaking the habit.

Those of you who know me even remotely well are aware of the fact that I’m quite active on most social networks. The frequency of usage and the manner in which I use them, of course, varies.

For example, I only use Instagram to post pictures of food cooked by my parents or funny things I come across while traveling. I follow a whole bunch of models, chefs and friends who are easy on the eyes. Anything that doesn’t make me drool, smile or chuckle does not belong on my Instagram feed.

Facebook, on the other hand, I use mainly to laugh at people who get married and of course brag about myself once in a while. Facebook is probably the most mainstream of all social networking sites and it is almost considered rude to not “friend” a family member there. I barely share anything regularly there except blog posts like this one and the occasional photograph, so I’m not very choosy about who stays on the list there. I always try to add only people I’ve met in real life though. The unfollow option there allows me to keep my feed as clean as possible and unless someone spams me or comments in a manner that embarrasses a family member or close friend.

Nobody uses Google Plus so I’m just going to end this sentence now.
Linkedin is one place where I wish I was more active and I see myself becoming more active there. When I do, I will of course keep it purely professional.

The last and the most important one of course is Twitter. There’s this app called Ofttime which counts the number of times you accessed an app and it says I open Twitter about 95 times a day on average. It is therefore safe to say I read almost every tweet on my Timeline tweet by the 350+ accounts I follow. I’ve taken Twitter breaks lasting longer than a couple of weeks on at least half a dozen occasions and the cause has almost always been the same: negativity overdose. A negative Facebook status update may not affect me much because I’ll probably miss it or be busy laughing about a listicle right above it. On Twitter though, people tend to have styles and patterns. The filter that most people use on other social networking sites like “Oh fuck! Amma might read this” on Facebook or “Oh fuck even my thaatha won’t read this” on Google+ is usually absent on Twitter. People let their thoughts go wild and post anything they deem fit to either vent, seek attention or opine. As someone who is now very close to a whole bunch people who got introduced to me via Twitter, I know how easy it is to develop friendships there. Heck, some of these things go way beyond friendship. Dirty mind you have. The point is that beyond a point, some of these people become what can be called an “obligatory follow.”
These are folks who followed you and you followed back ages ago when both parties were able to tolerate each other and in fact enjoyed reading thoughts posted but situations change and so do people. The fear of offending them makes one want to mute them or merely ignore tweets just because we do not wish to “hurt” any body. I’m fairly certain that I am at least a dozen folks’ “obligatory follow.”

This whole concept defeats the idea of social networking, right? I’m pretty sure some of you are pretty enough to follow on Instagram but not witty enough for my Twitter feed or close enough to me for my Facebook feed. Similar combinations can be formed for each person. So, I’ve decided that going forward, I’ll try my best to make sure that I only retain connections on platforms where they belong. The desire to keep everyone happy always comes in the way of one’s own happiness. It’s easier to please myself. I learnt that early in my teens.