Setting Boundaries With Nice People By Being Mean.
Let me start by saying “mean” and “nice” are very relative terms and when I use them here, I am using them because of that.
Facebook had been becoming more and more toxic for me since 2016 and it reached kind of a pinnacle last year with one “final straw” in the form of a seriously negative experience with a person I didn’t even remember I was friends and it hit me: WHY AM I FRIENDS WITH THIS PERSON? I did a massive culling that day. Facebook will show you your friends in a list that (kinda) ranks them from highest-interactive to lowest. So, I started at the bottom of that list and basically just kept unfriending people until I reached people who I actually interacted with (positively, of course) regularly enough that I would talk to them if I saw them in public.
I unfriended 300 people that day.
And let me tell you, they were all nice people. They were nice people by a lot of different kinds of standards. And I did something mean in unfriending them.
Here’s the thing…I was pretty restrictive already. I never sent out friend requests (intentionally, don’t get me started on how easy it is to accidentally send a friend request from those stupid “you may know” lists) and only accepted them from people I either knew in real life, or solid enough online that I would accept an invitation to coffee if they were in town. So these were not randos I unfriended. They were not faceless entities. They were people I knew, sometimes that I was related to, some I would definitely run into in public some day. And I did something mean: I unfriended them.
They were parents of my kid’s friends, or people I had worked with, or volunteered with, or run with. They were nice and good people by general standards. But that day, I decided I needed to set a few boundaries to make Facebook more enjoyable for me…and that required being mean to nice people.
1) I wanted Facebook to be as positive as I could make it so I needed a political bubble. I was struggling tons with negative political interaction in the real world because I’m in a red family and a red state, so I wanted Facebook to be positive. So, if someone vocally supported Trump? I unfriended them.
2) I wanted to kinda know who was out there because they regularly interacted with my stuff or they regularly posted things that I would see. I don’t expect people to post every day like I do, or even to “like” everything I post. But when I did that culling at least 100 of those people I forgot were my friends. I was shocked to see their names and if I’m going to write about my kids I want to be able to say I know who is reading it.
3) I didn’t want to ONLY be part of your side hustle. I don’t blame people who use Facebook for that at all. But if you’re going to try to sell me things or get me to attend your retreats, I want you to also interact with photos of my kids or posts about mental health. I don’t want to be on your list just so you have another person to mass communicate with. I had one person who I would totally forget they even existed until they would send messages to get me to participate in their events. And the messages would be fake-personal which I just couldn’t stand considering this person NEVER interacted with anything else I ever did. If you’re going to fake-care about me in a marketing push, then you need to extend the fake-caring out to at least periodically like a picture of my dogs.
Since I did this last May, I’ve also had to ignore a few friend requests. And this is kind of a “mean” thing to do to a “nice” person. But…I set those boundaries. And honestly? There were some people I couldn’t bring myself to unfriend; either because we have too much history together, or because I know we’re too ingrained in each other’s lives and it would make things way too awkward. So I definitely don’t want to add any more of those kind of situations in my life.
But let me tell you guys…IT IS SO VERY HARD. I do not like being mean and I do not like people being upset with me. BUT - if there’s anything I have learned from 2020 is that BOUNDARIES ARE IMPORTANT and that BEING LIKED BY EVERYONE IS NOT.
I really love Facebook now. Truly. Lately, it’s one of my favorite places online to be. I don’t have to brace myself for memes from people I know who superimpose MLK’s face onto a teacher at a blackboard that says that “Telling someone they are privileged because they are white is judging someone for their skin color.”
I mean, y’all, I’m no MLK expert but I’m certain he would agree that white privilege exists.
I don’t have to wonder who is reading my posts about my mental health and wonder if they’re judging me. I get to see photos of adventures (not that there’s many during a pandemic) and interesting articles and recommendations for good television…and most importantly: I get to keep up with people I want to keep up with. I saw a running friend walking her dog when I was leaving a greenway recently and I knew it was her because I had seen the pictures of her new dog! So I was able to holler at her and say something about her dog and that brief connection gave me a much-needed human interaction. But if it wasn’t for Facebook…I wouldn’t have seen her in like 3 years in the real world and I definitely would not have felt comfortable talking to her.
Basically Facebook is now the best tool for helping me with my social anxieties. It helps me stay connected with someone so when I see them the next time in real life I can ask them about their new house. Or the new job. Or we can talk about that show we both love and the news that the next season will be here soon. Facebook always had that potential, but it was also so toxic that I wasn’t able to maximize that before.
So all of that? Means the boundaries are worth it. And I try my best to still be kind to people, but I tell myself that if someone harbors negative feelings towards me for unfriending them on Facebook…then I understand that and I don’t add to the cycle by harboring ill feelings towards them. I simply remind myself the importance of some of these general boundaries and understand that not everyone will love that I set them and that is okay.
(I don’t always believe it is okay, but I do keep telling myself that.)