There are Facebook friends — and then there are “unfriends.”
But is it natural to cut people off, sever them from your life, and social circle, with a keystroke?
I lost a friend yesterday. She cut me off with the click of a mouse.
And it bothered me, not because I was particularly close to her, but because losing this friend is the price I have paid for trying to be the same with everyone.
Yesterday, when she unplugged and tuned me out, without so much as a note to tell me why, something hit me:
Doing it the Zuck way, having just one online identity — this mash up of my business self, and my social media self, and my personal life…
That isn’t serving me at all.
How many friends have I silently lost?
How many business opportunities have passed me by?
How many people have judged me, as unfit for dating, or unfit for a job, or unfit as a tenant or credit risk, or not fun enough to invite to a party — simply because I’ve “shared” so much?
Those of us with the courage to be ourselves, to strip ourselves bare and be open to everyone, we’re paving the way for this new era of “radical transparency” — but we’re paying the price.
Sometimes we lose someone.
When my “friend” unplugged yesterday. I asked her why. She complained that I am too negative and that I talk about business too much.
I looked back at my recent posts.
It’s the typical, safe, self-inflating fluff we all post on Facebook.
Like millions of us, I’m losing interest in Facebook, because it’s turning into the daily equivalent of the laughably phony Christmas letter.
We’re all scrubbing our “image” or creating a relentlessly upbeat “personal brand.”
So many of us are posting less, and just opting out. Or we’re unfriending each other because, frankly, most of us are boring.
Over the last year, in particular, I have lost more good, real friends than I’ve gained, simply because it’s so easy to chop someone off and unplug them if they are the least bit annoying.
(Something we never did back in the era when the average person had at most, 50 or 100 face to face, real relationships with real people we really knew.)
The social media era presents a new challenge for us:
We only get to be “one personality.” We are losing the ability to have multiple identities, or personas, when we switch back and forth between different social roles.
My personal Facebook page is a gathering all of my friends, family and business connections (and thousands of strangers) into a massive news feed.
This is unnatural for people like me, GenX/Boomers who grew up before the Personal Computer or Smart Phone and are used to having a public life and a very private life, which we zealously protected. (Remember unlisted phone numbers?)
Now, with every post I ask:
“Who should I be with my friends, my relatives, my clients, my ex bosses?”
And my solution is to heavily censor myself and be boring.
The baseline before posting is:
“Would Mom approve of this post?” (I cringed when Mom started following, and then the whole extended family. And then all of my clients. And my friends from High School? And all the reporters I work with. How do I turn them down?)
I also think:
“Will I look successful enough to my clients if I post this?”
By collecting everyone I’ve ever met into a gigantic friend/family/client/strangers mashup, I’m losing the ability to target my messages to any audience that gives a hoot about them.
And so I’m boring everyone, and they’re tuning out and unfriending.
Mark Zuckerberg once pissed a lot of us off when he said: “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”
“You have one identity,” Zuckerberg said. “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly.”
But what’s the price we pay for that? What kind of opinions are people making about us? How are they judging us? Is it really appropriate for my boss or coworkers to know so much about me?
And how can that information be used as a weapon against me? By friends, or more ominously — by strangers?
My lost friend… She’s a dancer, and a free spirit, and happens to post a lot of semi nude photos. Some might say she’s a narcissist. And an exhibitionist.
But I love her playful and delightful stream of a self-absorbed freewheeling life — and respect and admire her transparency and courage to be herself on Facebook and let it all hang out.
She’s an entertainer — and being way out there is her personal brand.
She’s structured her life in such a way that she can thrive, financially, without needing to present a squeaky clean normal image to the corporate world. More power to her.
But swimsuit photos or shots in a cuddle party would be career credibility suicide for me. I don’t have just one “tribe.”
As a writer, blogger, Facebook marketing consultant, I interact with 19,000 people (over 5,000 on just one of my 27 Facebook pages) in really diverse communities.
On one end, I have influencers — venture capitalists, CEOs, celebrities, clients and coworkers following me.
And on the other, I have my quirky personal tribe of healers, dancers, musicians, DJs, renegades and struggling artists.
As a communications bridge between these extremely diverse worlds, I have been able to influence some pretty major shifts in our society in a significant way.
For example, by convincing my business friends to try Burning Man, I helped introduce that life-changing artistic festival to a wider audience of “corporate types.”
I also got to link the New Age healing community to the Tech community in my role as a marketing consultant for the Wisdom 2.0 Summit.
That’s my role. Connecting diverse communities so brands can grow. Some call this “Growth Hacking.”
This is when transparency serves us. Connecting communities, creating a bridge, building understanding between disparate groups.
Facebook has done something huge to the world — it’s made us all “come out” as gay or straight, as left or right, as human beings. And that’s creating profound shifts in politics, human rights and global culture.
We’re letting our whole life hang out.
But those of us with the courage to be ourselves, to strip ourselves bare and be open to everyone, we’re paving the way — but we’re paying the price. Sometimes we lose someone.
It might be a landlord who sees a post about legalizing cannabis and judges us as a potential drug user.
Or an employer who looks at our travel photos and deems us too flighty to hold down a steady job.
Or a potential date who sees we’re a Bernie supporter when they’re pro Trump.
It’s natural, yes, human to manage your flows of information and present a different version of your “complete” self to your friends, family, co-workers, and more distant friends.
But is it natural to cut people off, sever them from your life, and social circle, with a keystroke?
I had 2,688 “friends” yesterday, and today I lost another one. It makes me think about how many other friends, business partners and opportunities Facebook has given me.
And how many it’s cost me. And continues to cost me.
And so with each post, I dim my light a little more. I censor myself.
I can overthink each post until I’m afraid to say anything at all.
Because it might “brand” me. And that’s the true danger of Facebook.
When being “transparent” to everyone means we’re afraid to speak our truth.
