The Biggest Benefit to Social Media

I wish I could remember the headline of the article my boss posted tonight. I no longer have access to it because I unfriended him. Coming on Facebook and posting something along the lines of making a comment like "This is a really well written article with many good points." and the title of the article ... fuck I can't remember. It may have well as been "Great Reasons to Love Oil".

I responded with the comment "Fuck Oil."

His reply to this comment was "What type of furnace do you have in your house?"

I was going to reply back with something snarky like "Why don't we contaminate your drinking water?" but I didn't. I guess I may as well have, since I wrote it here anyway, but nobody reads this shit. If you are reading this.... hahaha?

Instead, I unfriended him. See, when you are on television, and you hear something you don't like, you can change the channel. Newspaper, you can move on to other stories. But if that is the type of media they are going to get in front of you, fuck them.

The Biggest Benefit to Social Media is that you can curate your own content. You don't have to change the channel. You can remove it. Gone. Post shit like that, and now I know to minimise my exposure to you as a human.

And there is no shortage of content. It has gone from companies charging you for their content to everybody competing for your line of sight. Though some still try to charge. And cable TV wants money for channels.

If the TV channel is really good, then you should be able to get just that for about $10/month +/- $5-10. Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime all fall into that range. Facebook is a little different in that most of the content you see is shared by friends.

And so, you have to pick your friends. You can't stop them from posting things, but you can stop them from having any influence on you.

No loss. Am I petty? Maybe. Am I backing down? One could argue that with good support. Do I care? Not at all. Because it is my friends who I pick and I rarely ever unfriend anybody. They have to be annoying with the chain mail shit or something to get unfriended by me (and everybody).

But I think I am going to utilise this power more if need be. Most of my friends are pretty good though.

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jsturgis