The year was 2009. I was midway through year 11. Graduation was looming, and so too was the big goodbye that I’d soon have to say to my classmates and teachers.
You remember the feeling – you’d spent years bitching and moaning about all the ratbags in your grade, but then when the end was in sight, you got all sappy about the prospect of not seeing them everyday.
But then something brilliant came out of the woodwork, something that would ensure that we’d always be across what every loveable fuck wit was up to in years to come: Facebook (and a short time later, Instagram).
I remember watching noughties shows like Lizzie McGuire where students spent their final moments of school passing around a yearbook for their classmates to sign.
But as the social media age kicked off, it was all about adding absolutely every single soul at school on FB to ensure that you’d stay in touch #classof2010forever.
Flash forward a decade, we’re all adults with shitty adult problems, high school is but a distant memory (sometimes I wonder if I daydreamed the whole thing?), I speak to maybe six people from high school, and yet I’m still getting daily updates from that schmuck in Ancient History who now has a family, a mortgage and a plumbing business out in the sticks.
And look, sometimes I’ll see a photo of his missus and 55 kids pop up on FB and I’ll think, ‘Bless! Love that for him!’ But if I were to see him out and about, I’d dive into the nearest set of bushes to avoid making eye contact.
So if I am not willing nor able to engage with this person IRL, why on earth am I keeping up to date with his life on social media?
And it’s not just just ex-classmates. I’m talking people you met waiting in line for the toot at the clerb, your former colleague’s sister’s boyfriend who you were sat next to at a birthday dinner in 2014, people you worked with at Macca’s back in the day for a hot minute before they got fired for hoarding chicken nuggs.
I bet if you saw these people out in the wild, you would join me in the bushes to avoid that awkward reunion.
Why do we do it to ourselves?
Well, it’s a conflicting matter for me, ‘coz I’m the first one to reach for the voodoo doll when someone unfollows me on social media, and yet I’m sick of seeing updates from people I don’t talk to.
So what’s the solution? Don’t unfriend, unsubscribe – so to speak.
As I said, unfollowing is a harsh notion, one that tells the person you really don’t give a fuck about them, so if you want to be more low-key in the removal of this person’s existence from your life (the 10 year reunion is around the corner, after all), hit the mute button.
On FB, you can hit unfollow on a profile and you’ll no longer see their posts, but you’ll still be on their friend list, and you can mute a person’s posts and stories on Insta without unfollowing.
Recently I’ve gone on a mad muting spree where I’ve made sure my social media feed contains posts from people I actually want updates from (high school mates who I still speak to daily, my work wife, Jared Leto etc).
Having a more curated feed makes my daily scroll that much more enjoyable and removes the unnecessary clutter from my life, without majorly offending anyone because old mate from Ancient History will never know that I’ve opted to hide his holiday snaps.
While you’ve got some downtime during quarantine period, I implore you to spend an arvo scrolling through your socials and having a think about who you’re willing to put up with living room workout vids from and who isn’t worth the pain.
If ever there was a time to declutter, cleanse and curate your social media, now is it!
