Facebook Take a Break Feature puts friendships on Life Support

It’s not okay if we agree to disagree on this one

The other night a friend from my College Years posted something on Facebook that could be perceived as racist, if read in a certain light.  Specifically, any light bright enough to read her status post in.

It would be easy to unfriend her and not look back.  In fact, since I am trying to trim down my Facebook friends list, I may one day unfriend her completely.  But for the moment, I decided to use the Take a Break feature instead.

Facebook has a “new” feature called Take a Break.  As far as I can tell this is a more nuanced setting than simply hiding someone and obviously less severe than unfriending or blocking them.  It also appears to be meant for people who were in more intimate relationships that have now cooled but not completely diminished.

In the early years, Facebook had a little known setting called See less of/See More of.   It wasn’t easy to find and I don’t know if many people used it.  The setting has long since been deprecated but I suspect that if you implemented it, the affects are still in use.

The HIDE feature hides the person in question from your feed, but I suspect it also hides you from theirs.  This could be an unintended tell that you hide them when they suddenly stop seeing your cat video posts.

The Take A Break feature lets you chose if you want the “break” to be mutual or one sided.  Apparently you can hide your feed from them, but still see their posts; or vice versa.  I call this last one the narcissistic option.

This is the part where I justify not unfriending my little racist friend.  I really don’t have a good reason other than nostalgia or loyalty for keeping her around.  While I have not talked to this person IRL in decades, I am fond of the time we spent together in a sleepy little backwater college town.  I don’t think she realizes her racism overprivilege and I like to think that by staying connected to her, somehow I may influence her to reevaluate her outlook at social issues and inequality in America.  Now who’s being narcissistic.

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These letters have been in a shoe box for over 25 years. Find out what I’m going to do with them

Back in the day, people wrote one another because phone calls were expensive, especially if they were long distance.  I have this box of old snail mail

Treasure Trove, junk mail, it’s a fine line

letters from my college days and shortly thereafter.  A treasure trove of envelopes of multitudes colors and sizes, stamps of all varieties, and postmarks from exotic places such as Kirksville, Missouri.  Yes, I saved them all, sentimental fool that I am.

I tend to hold on to things too long. Old memories, mementos and more than a few grudges.  I’ve been holding onto these letters for decades, moving them from home to home but never looking at them.  So I figured the time has come to deal with them once and for all.

I thought I could take a quick, first pass through them and cull the less meaningful, superficial ones.  They cannot all be gems.

This proved harder than I thought because often within the contents of a typical boring letter are nuggets of goodness. I see things that I missed, undervalued or outright ignored the first time.

The Case for Getting Rid of It

You should only hang onto old memories, and their physical artifacts, for two reasons. One, they provide some warm fuzzies that elevate your mood. Two, they remind you of what to do or not to do when life throws you in that situation again.

These letters meant something to me decades ago. Leaving NMSU back in my college years was traumatic for me.  I had a good group of friends.  I was doing okay academically and repairing the damage to my GPA that my clueless freshmen self-inflicted.

Alas, I had to leave because of finances and for years I tried to get back to Planet Kirksville and the life I had to leave behind.  I would visit Kirksville and later St Louis, even considering relocating there to be with my college friends.

I spent a lot of my 20s struggling because I didn’t have the support structure here that I had there (or thought I had there).  I spent a lot of time and energy holding onto something that didn’t exist anymore and probably didn’t really exist in the first place.  And had I been able to let go sooner, I probably would have had a better 90s and 2000s.  It wasn’t until I built something solid here that I was finally able to let go.

I saved these letters because I figured I might read them in my old age and enjoy some warm memories. But honestly, if I have to read these to have warm memories when I’m nearly 80, my life didn’t turn out so well.

The Case for Keeping Some of It 

Back then, they only duct tape the important meaningful letters

I googled what do to with old letters and surprisingly half a dozen articles appeared with that title (hence why I’m not using it as the headline for this post).  The best advice was Get rid of all cards and letters that don’t add to your happiness. You know, the letter from someone who promised they’d write and at the tail end of summer you get a postcard saying “hey dude, how’s your summer been? ready to get back to classes,” Signed: Somebody That I Use to Know.

Since I have access to an Enterprise sized scanner I am scanning everything, significant or insignificant.   But this is proving to be a challenge since many of these letters are folded, crumpled odd-sized pages and as such, are a bitch to get into the feeder.

There are a few people I will be able to send the originals back just in case genealogists and family historians want some insight into how their ancestor thought, what made them happy, and what broke their hearts.

Stay tuned.

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There is a world of difference between Being Critical and being Negative

You’ve probably seen those memes that advocate eliminating negativity, or banning negative thoughts from your life, or putting negative people in concentration camps.  Okay I made up that last one until a reader goes to meme generator…

What I don’t like about the concept is that it doesn’t make a distinction between Negativity and simply being critical or challenging.  Conceptually it shouldn’t have to, one should know the difference.

Scenario 1:  your team is trying to solidify the date for a new annual event the company will sponsor.  Someone suggests the 3rd week in April.  Person says “it will probably rain.”

Scenario 2:  same thing except someone suggests the 2nd weekend in May.  Person says “well every few years it will conflict with Mother’s Day.”

I’m all for mitigating and insulating against negative drama.  Unfortunately many weak minded people don’t differentiate between the two.  And sometimes a conniving or Machiavellian-esque person will define negativity so fluidly so as an excuse to kick someone out of their social circle.

I’ve seen this movie before, it goes like this:

Step one:  communicate to world/friends in common OMG did you see what so-and-so did/wrote/said?
response:  No what was it?

step two:  I cannot even repeat it but trust me, it was awful so trust me when I deem it too harsh for human eyes.

Now you have two choices: conform or be cast out.

I’ve never been accused of being overly optimistic.  Or regularly optimistic either.  Or confident.  But I have been accused of making pointlessly derisive remarks.  While one person’s pointlessly derisive remark is another person’s merely challenging comment, whatever I allegedly said got me unfriended.

I don’t recall the comment.  It is possible that I wrote something that just wasn’t bursting with sunshine and kittens but we’ll never know because she went all FoodBabe on me and deleted the comment.

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Want to work at my company? Talk to me BEFORE applying

For the 3rd time since I started my not-so-new job, a friend has reached out to me asking if I could help them get into the company.  (4th if you count a douchebag who is not a friend so much as a raging asshole with no soft skills whatsoever).

I’m always willing to help a friend out with the job hunt if I can.  Unfortunately, these people already applied to my company before talking to me.  This move disqualifies me for receiving any referral bonus that I would get if they were hired.  I know that sounds a little a greedy but hey I have small children to feed.  After taxes the referral bonus could cover a month of daycare if not more.

Here’s the thing.  You’re asking me to help you get a six figure job (or high five figure) and you want me to put in the effort for nothing?  Brownie points and good feelings only go so far.  Compared to liking a stupid Facebook page for instance.

You’re asking me to stick my neck out and vouch for you.  Why wouldn’t you want me to get rewarded for that?  I know, you didn’t realize it worked that way.  Considering this is a fairly standard policy that tells me you haven’t tried to help someone get a position recently.   Ahem…with at least one of these people, I did tell explicitly tell them to talk to me before applying because of the referral bonus policy.

What’s that?  You still want me to see if I can reach out to the hiring manager?  Sure, as soon as you send me the equivalent of the lost referral bonus.  Don’t worry, if you don’t get hired I promise I’ll eturn it.

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The Stages of Facebook Unfriending

So the day comes and you find out that someone unfriended you on the Social Media Merry-go-Round that is Facebook.  Maybe you figured it out because you watch your friend’s list count.  Or maybe Facebook’s On This Day reminder pointed out someone you hadn’t thought of in a while.  Or perhaps you have some software that helps.  However it happened, you now know that someone you use to consider friend no longer considers you a friend.

Sidenote: is it unfriend or defriend?  hypen or no?  Discuss in the comments.

Shock and Denial

The first reaction to learning that someone could possibly have removed you from the list of friends is to deny the reality of the situation.

How could they do this?  I helped them pass Calculus in college.

It is a normal reaction to rationalize unbelievable discoveries. It is a defense mechanism that blocks out the immediate facts.  I use to be one of those people who wouldn’t unfriend someone unless they were completely toxic and would get sad if someone unfriended me.

 Anger

 Rationally, we know the person is not to be blamed.

Why am I the only person from our now defunct Book Club that they unfriended!

Emotionally, however, we may resent the person for causing us pain or for leaving us. We feel guilty for being angry, and this makes us angrier.

Bargaining & Rationalization

Okay they only unfriend me because I did not wish them a sincere enough birthday or forgot to high five them or acknowledge any recent unlocking of a Major Life Achievement.

Acceptance Retaliation

Confession:  I have been aggressively culling my FB friends list in order to get down to a more reasonable level.  I was keeping a lot of them because of loyalty and whatever but fuck if we don’t interact anyway what is the point?  And I know some of this is caused by Facebook itself not showing you everyone’s status updates in your feed.

For instance, there are a couple of people I use to do speed work with for Marathon Training…in 2005. Or somebody that I met at a friend’s party a million years ago.  Do I really need to keep them in my friends’ list as some sort of message in a bottle to our future alien anthropologist exploring our post-apocalyptic planet?

Oh, he was friends with this attorney who also happened to be friends with someone who would eventually know someone who was there when the revolution began.

I think not.  Therefore I am diligently and aggressively culling my friends’ list.  So far I’ve cut about 150 people albeit, 3-5 people at a time, once a week since Lent started.  Do you know what I discovered?  It’s funny but just deleting 1-2 people will change the look of your feed.  Unfriending Marek, the fellow Pole I met at Eurocircle ten years ago has suddenly shown me Erika in my feed again.  I haven’t seen her stuff since 2009!

In general I’m unfriending people that don’t fit one of the criteria for being a friend/connection on FB:

• Real friends and family that I care about;
• People who entertain, enlighten or inform me;
• People I’m loyal to;
• People I know.

I discovered doing that breaks the FB algorithms and I see more of my active friends stuff.  I’m actually engaging with people on Facebook that I haven’t interacted with in years!  So now the challenge is to unfriend people who would remain uninvolved in my life anyway so that I can rediscover people who have only been dormant because of those blasted algorithms.

Stay tuned.

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Dear Chase Bank: Stop Spamming me

Every month, I get an email from my bank telling me that my statement is available online.  I also get one for my Chase Credit Card telling me that my balance and minimum due can be viewed online.  Finally, every time they tweak their site or terms of service, I get an email telling me to read the changes in their Secure Message Center.

Why the fuck don’t you just email me this information?  Not the bank statements of course.  But changes to Terms of Service?  Who the fuck cares if the Nigerian Princes read that!

I’m really annoyed that your “your payment is due” email doesn’t contain any useful information because Discover Card and Citibank emails do.  And if they have figured out how to safely relay that information to me in an email  — or avoid any liability if the info is breached —  I think you can too.

Here’s the latest thing they sent me:

Are you fucking kidding me!  You couldn’t just send that to me in the original email?  You’re gonna make me log into my account, click over to Secure Message Center, go through two more clicks just to read a form letter with a fucking link to the actual relevant updated privacy statement!

There is a name for Emails that don’t contain any useful information.  We call that spam.  Stop it.

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Crowdsourcing Fail: Help or get the Fuck out of the way

Sometimes in my Facebook Feed, I see someone asking their friends a question or a plea for help and all the helpful responses touch me.  I’m also saddened that I don’t seem to have normal healthy well-adjusted friends like that.

Crowdsourcing, for those who don’t know, is when you are saying “Dear World, I know that I could research this myself.  But I’m wagering more than one of you already has and if I could simply learn from your effort we’d both benefit: I’d save me time and you’d get that attaboy feeling of Flourishing Returns.”

In fact, I’m pretty sure Crowdsourcing is derived from some ancient dead language term that means help or gets the fuck out of the way.

From time to time I post a Crowdsourcing Question (CSQ) on Facebook and find that the majority of the responses are my friends practicing their stand-up routines.  Usually, there are some helpful nuggets in between the snarky comments and it makes for a fun afternoon.

The other day I posted a CSQ and I didn’t expect much help because it was a very narrow request that only a small number of people could help me with.  But the instructions were very simple.

I asked if anyone could help, please DM me.  I didn’t want to discuss all the morbid juicy detail on my public feed.  The implication being that If you cannot help me, feel free to skip to the next status update about cute kitten videos or what someone had for lunch at Trendy Resto of the Week.

Luckily I did have one friend who not only followed the simple instructions but was able to help me find what I needed.  and for that I’m thankful.  Yet the responses I got fell into the following categories:

• Clarification questions posted on my status.  Okay, I can allow those since it is easier to type where you see than to make the effort to bang out a DM. because life is hard for people who can afford $600 smartphones.
• A request for me to DM the other person because Chicks just cannot message a guy even in a non-romantic scenario.
• The classic doofus who wants credit for helping out without actually lifting a finger to do anything.

This last animal is the one that really gets my goat.  Some people really enjoy the rush of helping someone out.  Some people merely enjoy the appearance of being the person who helps out everyone without actually providing any tangible help.  Sometimes it’s because they chose the one type of help that doesn’t require them to get off the sofa.

Other times it is because some people want to get the credit for helping out without doing any of the actual work.  Even when the level of effort to help out is far less than the effort of looking like you’re helping out.

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Getting It Off Your Chest: Next time call a cab

I’d like to introduce a new segment here on Mysteries of Life called Getting It Off Your Chest. The ideas is to write a short post about some past slight, trespass or other injustice committed on the behalf of a Friend-Who-Really-Wasn’t.

It could be that time your roommate chose to go to a movie instead of help you celebrate your milestone birthday; it could be the friend who made you leave a cool party before you scored someone’s phone number because they had to leave now; it could be someone promised to help you move and then didn’t answer their phone all weekend.

The mitigating criteria being that the statute of limitations for bringing it up to said friend has very likely long since expired but you are still traumatized by it for some reason. The purpose isn’t to bitch, whine and moan but to move on by gaining some closure.

I invite readers to share their experiences as well.

Once upon a time I was supposed to pick up Jema from the airport.  Well not the airport actually but from an El stop.  Jema is the friend who, in a roundabout way, introduced me to my wife.

Jema was coming into town and we worked out that she would take the El from Midway Airport to the Belmont Redline/BrownLine Station.  I had a chiropractor appointment around the corner and we determined that the timing would work out peachy.

So here’s the thing.  I left my home in a hurry to get to the appointment and I forgot my cell phone.  This should not have been a big deal because if she called I should in theory be able to borrow someone’s phone to call my voicemail and get any frantic messages from Jema asking where the hell I am.  In fact, some VM systems even let you press a button and call the person back using whatever phone you use to access your VM.

Except no one uses phones to talk anymore.  Or leaves voicemails.  It’s all text, text, text.  I can access my text messages on my iPad, if they are sent from an iPhone.  But guess where my iPad was?  That’s right, at home next to my iPhone.

And Jema of course didn’t stay put at the station.  Why would she when she has her phone and I have my phone and it would never occur to this Kellogg G-school “everyone needs to be accountable for themselves no government handouts” Republican that maybe if someone isn’t responding they might not have their phone.

I had to drive back home, fetch my phone to learn that she was just a block away at the Starbucks and then drive back again to fetch her.

I’m annoyed because back in the day if we were meeting a friend somewhere, we waited at that spot.  And if you left for any reason, even if just to kill time window shopping because you got there early, you circled back to make sure you didn’t miss each other.  It never occurred to Jema to do this!  I may have to see if my Employee Assistance Program will pay for the therapy from this one.

And talk about ownership and personal responsibility.  I felt bad about keeping her waiting so I drove back the 6 miles to the Starbucks.  No apologies for leaving the spot we agreed to meet at!  I should have made her take a cab.

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