Understanding can build bridges and connections where as shaming is about destruction of spirit and soul. I think people need to be more sensitive to the plight of others and that their circumstances are sometimes out of their control. We live in a very diverse world where no two people encounter life in an identical way. Opening your heart and mind can go a long way into creating peace both communally and individually. Maybe this is the door to peace?
Tag Archives: connections
Thanks Facebook For Letting Me Know About Unfriending
I got this on my Facebook recently. After un-friending someone they seem to make you want to feel guilty for doing so. You can un-follow, meaning you won’t see their posts but you remain friends which I have done a lot lately. However you just need to disconnect from someone for your own reasons. I think Facebook has been a hotbed and a petri dish for political and religious discussion which is not always friendly. Passions run red hot there and sometimes disconnecting is what is best for relationships and online enjoyment. It is sad when you have to end a online connection but there are plenty more to make out there.
The Genuine Articles
Every blog I post, every tweet I post, every status update I put on Facebook comes from me and in the most genuine way. What you see here and there is what you get. My life, my opinions, my crazy stuff all comes from my heart and head. Now I don’t reveal everything because everyone has the right and privilege of some privacy. Connecting with like-minded people is a great thing and can make this social thing even more fun. I encourage genuine dialogue and genuine posts because it tells the story about unique people who are trying to figure out this crazy world we live in. My friends lets strive to be the genuine articles.
Upping My Twitter Presence
As I have taken a break from Facebook it’s important to up my game on Twitter. One thing I wanna do there is to engage my blog readers and other friends who are there to make them aware of my presence. Blogging and Tweeting seem to be good friends so I want to take advantage of that. Sometimes you need more than 140 characters to share whats on your mind. Granted the stream on Twitter is different from Facebook in that you see more users at one time on Facebook so you have to stand out among the crowd. So far though I haven’t seen as much inbound interaction on Twitter as of yet. You are welcome to follow me there as well as my other social outlets.
BTW my Facebook break is going well. Haven’t missed it much.
The More, The Merrier
When someone likes your posts and follows your blog it’s a great feeling. However, I am not all about getting as many followers as possible here at The Tony Burgess Blog. Quality is as important as quantity in my mind. A fellow blogger just mentioned she reached the 1000 follower mark and I am thinking do I want to do the same here. On Tumblr I had well over 1000 followers but it became difficult to manage that many. WordPress might be a different animal though.
Currently I am around 850 so I am not far off. Making connections and friendships in blogging is what I am most interested in doing, but can you do that with 1000 people. My brother-in-law has near 5000 friends on Facebook which I think is the cap on personal accounts but he is a person who naturally makes connections in his line of work. I guess time will tell if I reach that 1000 follower milestone. Perhaps I just should think that the more the merrier is a good thing. Hopefully it means people like you, or something like that.
Unfriend/Unfollow, It Happens
There comes a time in everyone’s social media life where they must unfollow/unfriend people on various platforms. Facebook is one of those places where it is a chosen community of people you are connecting with and sometimes their posts can either be repetitive and sometimes offensive. Granted there no two people who agree with each other 100% of the time, and that is OK. It’s only when those people ramp up the rhetoric, whether it be political, religious or social commentary that can be very negative, that you have to make that decision on your connection status.
In America we are in the midst of an election campaign season where we will go to the polls in 2016 to elect a new president and other federal offices. Canada just completed that cycle recently and sometimes being on social media can be challenging when it comes to politics because it can be personal. It’s the constant barrage of posts that come from friends who post mean spirited things that can test your relationship status.
Religious and social commentary can be divisive too. We have all seen the issues such as faith, gender, orientation and the like that people fall on different sides of. To me it’s OK to disagree on some things, but you know it’s amazing to see the venom on your screen from people who you thought were reasonable and kind. It can be disappointing to see comments that are out there for the world to see and you wonder what is the source of their ire.
I know there are people who have unfollowed/unfriended me for various reasons and that is OK. Perhaps this is an opportunity for all of us to examine our friendships and who we are as individuals who have a right to feel the way they want to about all the stuff going on in the world. It is OK to be sad when your friendships change, that is life.
Then there are sports rivalries and that can be just as contentious as politics, religion and social issues. Especially on rivalry days.
Unfriending, Unfollowing, it happens and you have to move on. Sometimes you just have to cut ties.
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