{"id":180,"date":"2009-01-30T06:25:15","date_gmt":"2009-01-30T14:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/?p=180"},"modified":"2009-01-30T06:25:15","modified_gmt":"2009-01-30T14:25:15","slug":"unfriendliness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/2009\/01\/unfriendliness\/","title":{"rendered":"Un”friend”liness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let me preface this by saying I am not a particularly “social” person, in the way the word is used today. Not that I feel comfortable at parties, but rather that I don’t rate high on assessments showing social contacts as being important to my learning style. This would include the Multiple Intelligences survey<\/a>, where my high scores are in language, music, and intrapersonal (self), but low in interpersonal (social).<\/p>\n

When I began joining social networks, it was always with my personal learning in mind. I was creating, in the new edutech lingo, a “Personal Learning Network”, links with people from whom I could learn, usually about things I could apply to online teaching. Often these connections were one-way, like reading their blogs. Sometimes, as with Twitter<\/a> or Ning<\/a> groups, they could be two-way or multi-way communication.<\/p>\n

Eventually I became active in Twitter, tried Plurk<\/a> and gave it up because of a visual interface that hogged screen space, eschewed MySpace<\/a> (since I’m neither 13 years old nor have a band), and opened an account in Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My Twitter network focuses primarily on people in educational technology, and a few like-minded professors, all of whom live somewhere else (mostly in Canada). I can count on one hand Twitter pals that I know in person. Because of who they are, I rarely hear about what they had for breakfast or what movie they’re seeing. They tend to post their struggles with technology or pedagogy, and links to useful tools. If I delete them (or block them, as I do those who are trying to make money from me), I don’t feel badly. I post whatever I want, knowing they don’t have to “follow” me if they don’t like what I write. This is my stream coming in from the outside world. It must be useful to me.<\/p>\n

It has gradually become clear that Facebook is different. Old high school friends have found me, or I have found them. MiraCostans have found me. Students have found me. Family members. People from the Connectivism course and my Twitter network have “befriended” me.<\/p>\n

In Twitter, you aren’t “friends”. You follow people or not. One of my Twitter pals posted that Facebook should require people “unfriending” you to say why. Not only do I disagree, I find the expected “commitment” in Facebook to be somewhat stifling. Not following someone is one thing, but here you’re clicking an X because you don’t want to be someone’s friend anymore<\/em>. That’s one part of high school I definitely do not miss!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Nevertheless, I decided that FB was becoming overcrowded with disparate contacts who were not contributing anything to my learning or my true social life. I don’t need to read my students whining about not wanting to go to class. Many of my Twitter pals have their tweets posted in FB, so those posts duplicate what I already read. And many of the people from the Connectivism class I didn’t really get to “know” anyway. I would like Twitter to be (mostly) my educational technology network, and FB to be (mostly) my friends and real-life colleagues network. That’s my choice, right?<\/p>\n

So yesterday I posted to FB: “If I un-friend you in the next few days, please forgive me and don’t be offended.” A couple of people protested. One apologized profusely if he had upset me. My colleague Greg Hope answered: “How efficient technology can be! This kind of thing takes years in the real world and hardly ever includes prefab forgiveness. I’m finally beginning to understand Facebook!”<\/p>\n

So I’ll apologize here too, because people who actually know me in the online environment read my blog, at least occasionally. But it does feel kind of bizarre….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let me preface this by saying I am not a particularly “social” person, in the way the word is used today. Not that I feel comfortable at parties, but rather that I don’t rate high on assessments showing social contacts as being important to my learning style. This would include the Multiple Intelligences survey, where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-web"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}