My new day-job recently added me to a series of work groups and pages, and for a few terrifying hours it thrust me back into the world of Facebook as it was before I spent a few years trying to tame it. Streams of data spiraling into my feed out of nowhere, trying to catch my attention, with a steady ping of notifications demanding action. It was such a stark difference from my usual social media experience that I had to go have a lie down, and clear my head to avoid going into a mild panic of so much stuff.
The next day, when I logged on, I went through the familiar ritual of tamping down on Facebook’s impulse to throw everything it has my way. Groups were unfollowed and bookmarked in my browser, so I can jump to them directly without seeing their content in my newsfeed. I turned off or muted alerts, which meant my notifications once more focused on stuff that required action on my part, and Facebook became a peaceful place once more.
Most people don’t think of Facebook as peaceful, and I acknowledge the designation is relative. But for the most part, Facebook is an additive experience for me — a place to log in, share details with a small network of friends and writing colleagues, and get updates from folks I care about in return. My daily feed shows updates from approximately 65 people at this point (there’s another 25 or so where I’ll go directly to their page for occasional updates, because the flow of data from their accounts was great but not something I wanted appearing on my feed out of nowhere).
The work it took to make Facebook work like that was considerable, and as the recent additions reminded me, isn’t the way I’m expected to use the platform. Tools that used to be a core part of my experience, such as the ability to check a custom friend list, have fallen by the wayside as the platform developed. Mostly, I haven’t missed them; once you start using Facebook in a subtractive way, stripping down the tools to focus on the elements that add value to you rather than company, it’s easier and easier to set aside the stuff you weren’t useful.
And everytime things change, giving you a blast of what your feed used to be like, it’s easier and easier to cleave to the philosophy of using social media anti-socially.