There used to be a time when you could break up with someone, and you could keep it under wraps while you deal with the emotional side and heal privately. You got to chose when you told friends, and not them finding out before you (because your significant other clicked “cancel relationship” on Facebook to let you know things are over). Broadcast to your network and open to their commentary. It’s become nearly impossible to have a “private” life if you actively engage in social networks. Take this example I found in my newsfeed this morning:
The openness of social networks, emotions stream in real time. Salt to the wound. Shame on you, Andria, bad form.
Emotions are rubbed raw in other networks. FourSquare’s check-ins and ping updates can notify you when your crush checks in to a romantic restaurant with a member of the opposite sex after they’ve told you that they’re going home to rest (if you’re crushing on someone, I strongly recommend for your sanity that you shut off the ping updates). Or perhaps you expose yourself to your network by tweeting out links to emo songs.
If you see me tweet this….you know what’s up.
So what do you do you do when you go through an emotional experience online? Block and unfriend the folks that offend? Delete your networks entirely? Go on hiatus?
How do you deal with the insensitivity and the exposure of the Web?
I would say do not seek advice from those heavily entrenched in SM Gossip…
For me, there definitely IS such a thing as “too much information”. Do I really want two-or-three thousand people knowing my personal business? *HELL* to the no. Everyone has personal business that is just that: PERSONAL. Other people’s travails are none of my business, nor are mine theirs.
Every now and then, I’ll see a thread like the one you’ve posted above. People can’t just leave well enough alone. Even the well-intentioned come off sounding … icky. The most awkward ones come from the people who change their status from “in a relationship” to “it’s complicated”. GAG.
I wish that people would just leave the relationship status thing [on FB] turned OFF.
I hate seeing posts like the facebook one becuase I know it usually means a friend of mine has been hurt. We question the sanity of living in public only when our personal pain gets shared. How do I deal? Me who lays it all out there via my blog, etc? Who makes connecting with him via phone, email or IM so easy?
I look for the real in people. It’s easy to see, even though people feel that they can hide it behind a smile and a handshake in a hotel bar. I understand that any sharing when people who have no real connection to you are going to see it and react to it, and know that their opinion is truly meaningless.
I judge my value based on the handful of people I truly love and trust. And I remove any agenda, that so many “social media” people seem to have, from the things and people that matter most.
I live in public because i view myself as a member of the world community. I live in public because I am proud of what I have become. I also know that at times, my life is sad, and I get just as emo as the next guy. Having people within my community telling me it’s going to be ok outweighs the negative effect of the few who attempt to take advantage of the situation.
[...] this morning, my friend Jessica wrote a post about public breakups and social media oversharing. Which got me thinking. Ive done a good job (I think) of keeping the demise of my relationships as [...]
Public and Private lives are in a state of flux. Like Micah – although to a lesser scale – I live a public life. I’m unashamed about living in a public life because the public helps me get through the ups and downs of life. I do it because I’m not the type to heal in private. When I recently had my heart broken – I needed to write this blog post: http://nosenseoftime.org/2010/01/fairly-a-fairy-tale/ – I needed to share because I needed my friends and those that don’t know me make me feel better. They help make me stronger and ultimately move on. Does it turn off some people – of course. But I like being me. I like the ups and downs of emotions. I didn’t start blogging to not be me. I started it because I wanted to share my life and that involves all the great things and all the bad things.
In the end, I have much more confidence because I am so public with everything. I never feel alone and the blues or mean reds evaporate that much quicker. It’s probably why I stuck around on the web this long. It brings people together. It makes everything okay…
Social media has clearly been disruptive to our personal lives. We grew up thinking and approaching social interactions one way and now it’s all different.
At the same time, children are growing up with this medium as a part of their lives; they don’t understand a world without it. How will their generation share their personal experiences as they mature? What does that mean for our society?
For me? I keep my networks intact (little point in passive-aggressive bridge burning) and keep my strongest negative emotions to myself (no point in sharing those with the world).