I’ve been in pursuit of “Inbox Zero” for some time now, and things are getting better there. But, in my quest to pare my life down to what is most valuable and essential, I’ve also decided to pursue what I’m calling Friend Zero™.
I’ve been thinking for some time that I should just bail out of Facebook altogether. After all, I’ve been saying for some time that “social media is the open sewer of american discourse.” But there are reasons for not bailing out altogether.
First, as a marketing and communications professional, I should be not only using, but well informed and skilled with social media… no matter how much I might think it’s become an albatross around the necks of many businesses. There is, for some businesses, legitimate value in some of the so-called social media platforms.
So a professional presence is not a bad idea. Besides, there are some professional connections that also matter personally to me.
But I do want to pare down the distractions, fluff, and time sinks in my life. I want to engage in more truly personal forms of communication and more authentically connect with the people I value. A social media account pared down to the “professional essentials,” and cleared of all personal detritus and distractions, that’s Friend Zero.
I know that I am still Facebook friends with some people I will never see again and would never pick up the phone and call. These seem like the obvious, low-hanging fruit of getting to Friend Zero. Looking at my friend list, I think, if I called them right now on the phone:
a) How much would I have to remind them who I am?
b) How weird would it be to be calling them? Would they be confused or creeped out?
c) When is the last time I interacted with them without a prompt from Facebook?
But, to pare things down to a strictly professional presence, I can’t simply bail out of Facebook altogether. Instead, I’ve have to cull my friends out of the platform and leave a skeleton crew of professional connections. That will be the ideal state of Friend Zero.
As a first step to Friend Zero, each time I️ get an email notification from Facebook, I’ll:
- Contact that person, by phone or in person, if they are valuable to me. I’ll let them know I am moving from FB to “good, old fashioned” communications with them.
- I’ll capture all the relevant information from the subject’s account — Their contact info, birthday, etc. (The stuff that used to go in an address book.)
- Then, I will unfriend that person.
— OR —
- If I don’t feel compelled to actually contact them, I will just unfriend them. It will be a judgement call each time.
The result, I hope, is only professional relationships on Facebook, and an account there the I can experiment with and learn from without the distractions of “real” interpersonal relationships. For my friends, it means a return to good, old-fashioned communications and, I hope, more fulfilling personal relationships.
I’ll regularly report my progress here. Wish me luck.
— Dan