Status: Paring down my social media consumption after reading a good blog post from my friend Shanan Delp. I need to allow more time to create stuff instead of consuming stuff, and honestly, Facebook is only interesting for me to keep up with friends’ photos (if only that). I suddenly took notice of how many useless feeds and updates I was feeding my brain everyday - and I wanted to be more conscious about the types of media that I consumed.
It was pretty hard (thanks Facebook for making it so unintuitive!) to remove myself from these inane groups and pages and interests that clogged up my feed and hours of the day, when I can be more inspired otherwise. I’ve also removed applications, including various feeds that published into my stream and cluttered up my friends’ feeds. Have also pruned my friends list.
Facebook increasingly feels like online Wal-Mart to me, where experiences are bolted on and users are routed through the bargain bin without anything working or designed well. I’ll check in from time to time to catch up on friends who I can’t just call to have a drink or a meal - but other than than, if you’d like to share something with me individually, please use email or phone. I have little use for other all-you-can-eat social networks too (hello Google Plus) which just sucks all real life interactions and warps them to online vapidity. There are plenty of online services that inspires better and encourages me to be more adventurous in real life – I miss that.
Of course, in the alternate reality, I’ll still be posting things I find interesting over at blog(dot)joshuanguyen(dot)com – if you’re so inclined to check – but hopefully, this requires you to make an explicit action of following my interests instead of passively being annoyed at how many things I post throughout the day.