You’re “friends” don’t matter and you should stop caring so much about them. When I speak about “friends” I’m talking about the online interactions that we have developed because of social media. The people who we view of as friends on social media like Facebook or Twitter are, in all reality, not our friends in the traditional terms. They are a construct of a digital world, a relationship with very little actual involvement or interaction. It is the nature of social media, we have been trained to favorite, like, or plus other people’s posts without actually spending the time to interact with them. This has become a socially acceptable means of interaction that has mostly replaced actual conversations. The hundreds of “friends” you have on Facebook is meaningless and a large portion of those people, you or I, would never even consider them to be real friends, it’s not because we don’t like them or value what they have to say it’s simply because we don’t know them, we can’t actually know them, we don’t actually have conversations with these people. It really is kind of sad. The ecosystem of social media and digital interaction has fundamentally changed drastically over the years. I use to spend hours a day actually conversing with people online. Many of the people I would interact with, most of which I have never met face to face, I would consider to be true friends. I knew and connected with these people in a very fundamental and passionate way. It was fantastic. We don’t really do that anymore. This is a shame and that is why you should care less about your “friends” but start investing more time into real connections.
Now you may be thinking that myself being a person of the internet, who needs social media, and my personal brand success is contingent on the masses knowing who I am, that this blasphemous statement about caring less about your social media friends makes no sense. At face value I would agree. When we look at the standard of “success” in the social landscape it is heavily dependent on how many people follow you. If the only metric you base your ROI (return on investment) on is financial success, then the logic is sound, on the surface. Especially if all you are doing is monetizing by ad revenue. While I would love to have financial success and have writing and photography be my only source of revenue it is definitely not how I want to base my ROI on the things I am doing. Financial success in this ecosystem is something that frankly I am not concerned with, it is not the reason why I started this blog or share my photos. I started providing content firstly for myself, to overcome my fears and build confidence in my passions, and secondly to help other people facing the same barriers that I do and be inspired to do great things. I want to help people not monetize off the masses. Financial success and money is not how I determine value in my life. I would much rather have the knowledge that I have touched someone’s life, that I helped them see the world around them and venture out with confidence and creativity. I want to make a difference in other people’s lives as much as in my own. That being said, I need social media for people to find me, my photography, and my content but I’m not trying to pander to everyone. I want to develop a hardcore and solid fanbase, a legion of followers that love what I do and want to be a part of a community. These people keep coming back and bring more value than I could ever give. I’m not interested in pleasing everyone and I would much rather not have people just scroll through their stream, glance at my photos or my content, click like and move on. These people are the people I don’t care about and neither should you in your own endeavours or life. I want my content and photos to speak to people, I want to have a discussion on them, I want to hear about your dreams and aspirations, I want to met you in person and go on a photowalk or have a cup of coffee/tea and just get to know you. These things also do not come natural to me, for me talking to people comes with ease but starting a conversation with a person is like walking through a tornado, I am just no good at it and it is uncomfortable for me. I don’t enjoy bullshit small talk, I favor conversation and thought provocation, this style of conversation is hard to pick up and spark with strangers (in my experience).
What does all this mean? If we should stop caring about our “friends” what should we care about? Well there are a few things that I have set out to do in my own personal life and it’s all about making connections. In many recent years a large chunk of my relationships and interactions have been incredibly superficial, they don’t hold meaning or substance, they’re just one dimensional. I don’t like the state of affairs so I have been actively working to change them. The first thing that I have been doing to develop these connections with people is stop liking or favoriting things unless, along with the like/favorite, I have a comment to say in addition, something that may develop a conversation or interest. I think it has become too easy to just like/favorite something and move on, it isn’t social interaction. I would equate the like/favorite to the head nod as you are walking down the street, a non-verbal action men are most scene doing in acts of approval or disapproval, there is no social interaction just an implied non-verbal act of approval or disapproval. It’s mostly meaningless and we put far too much value on how many favorites or likes we receive. I want my interactions in my digital life to be meaningful not just a digital head nod. Moving forward, count on me to reply to any comments you have on anything I do and if I like or favorite any of your stuff you can count that I will likely have something else to communicate. Like I said before, this is more about developing a connection and a community. Community in my opinion is the most important part of social interaction.
Life isn’t all about our digital life. I’m not sure if you haven’t noticed but there are real, breathing, speaking human beings all around us. They have dreams, thoughts, feelings, aspirations, fears, passions, and love to be shared and experienced. I’ve noticed that with the superficial evolution of our digital interactions our real life interactions have become just as superficial. The people we interact with on a daily basis become cogs to service our machine, which is sad because there are some really great people out there that have value to offer us. Upon this realization I have actively been talking to the check-out person at the grocery store, the barista at the coffee shop that knows exactly what I want and has it started before I even pay, the waiter/waitress at my favorite food establishments, and the random person on the street. It has been a social experiment for myself. An experiment to relearn how to socialize with my fellow human beings, to interact on an intimate and personal level, and to gain value from them. The interesting part is that I have learned a lot about myself as much as I have learned from other people. I am by no means an expert at interacting with people, especially in real life, but I have become much more confident in my ability to carry a conversation and learn from other people. Many people who know me wouldn’t probably think that confidence in conversation is something that I struggle with but it has been a major difficulty that has always plagued me so to become much more confident in conversation has been an astounding added value to my life that I hadn’t expected to achieve. Day to day social interactions with the people you see regularly is a way to expand your ability to connect with people and be more open and understanding.
Lastly, the most important thing that I have implemented recently is that everyday I set out with the intention of learning at least 1 thing new from someone else, everyday. I don’t need to learn something profound or groundbreaking, I just want to know something new about someone else or knowledge that they have to share. The little things you learn from someone may be in fact massive in the long run. In order for me to do this I have started asking questions to the people that I interact with everyday, I just want to learn a little bit more about the person or absorb some of their knowledge. A great example is something that my barista told me one day that really got me thinking for a few days on just how profound it was. It came from a simple question I had asked her, “How are you today?” Her response to this was “It’s Tuesday, my day is fantastic! Anything can happen today!” I was awestruck, I did not expect that response and it very quickly made me curious. I replied with curiosity “What do you mean anything can happen?” and to that she responded “There are no assumptions about Tuesdays, no labels associated with it so anything can happen.” Again, awestruck by the profound nature of this realization, it quickly got me thinking. I thought about it nearly all day and still come back to it regularly and revisit this notion. This is why I think it is just so profound. Everyday of the week has some sort of assumption associated with it and as of this moment in time I have never heard any assumptions paired with Tuesday besides it’s the day after Monday. Here is how I see the days of the week:
When we break things down this way each day has some sort of preconceived notion associated with it but not Tuesday. Tuesday is the day that ANYTHING can happen because it doesn’t play to any established roles or labels. Often times people say “I wish everyday could be a Saturday”, hell I use to as well, but why? After a while having no obligations and doing whatever the hell you want gets boring, you soon run out of shit to do. We should instead live everyday like Tuesday with focus and task but flexibility and the knowledge that anything can happen. To me this has been profound, life isn’t about doing whatever the hell you want it’s about doing things that have value and importance and living everyday like anything can happen allows us to actually live. When we put labels on all the things we do we can never truly be spontaneous and experience life for what it is, beautiful and exciting.
If I had never asked my barista a simple question I never would’ve discovered such a profound statement. Had I not set out to learn something new from someone everyday I never would’ve even asked the question. If I didn’t want to create meaningful connections with the people I interact with on a daily basis I never would’ve talked to my barista beyond my order. Had I not wanted to create meaningful connections in my digital life I never would’ve wanted to create meaningful connections in my real life. The things we do have ripple effects and doing one small thing can lead to profound realizations that bring an excessive amount of value to our daily lives. So we make it full circle and I come back to “care less about your ‘friends’ and make everyday a Tuesday”. I encourage everyone to stop putting value on how many “friends” you have or how many likes you get and put more value on developing deeper connections with the people we interact with on a daily basis. You never know, you may just learn something from someone that changes your life forever, I have.