You ever interact positively with someone, thinking you’re making their day a fraction of a degree better and all it does is remind them that you exist and that they don’t ever want to be reminded of that again?
I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and getting down on myself for being a lurker. I always tell people that even just “liking” (/favoriting, starring, whatever the option is) something is a nice way to show people that you exist and you appreciated what they posted. Someone you haven’t spoken to in years but is connected with you on social media could be gifted a smile with just a tap that says “I care”. It’s a nice thing to do and you should do it – along with other more significant forms of positive interactions and pleasantries – a little more often.
Of course – I do have my integrity consider. I can’t just go Liking any dumb post that doesn’t disserve it as that would cause inflationary rates in the bank of my approval that the social economy may not be ready to deal with at this time. None the less — oh, and I just spelled “deserve” as “disserve” in that last sentence, completely unintentionally, btw… wtf is wrong with me? — But None the less I was feeling altruistic and made a commitment to myself that some lucky bastard or bastardette is going to get the ole thumbs-up from me before I go more than two pages lower, get bored, and close the app. My quick criteria in the journey I was about to embark on was preferably someone I haven’t interacted with in a really long time – the longer the better – who posts something even mildly creative, interesting or amusing.
Then – my screen on my phone got brighter as a bold orange-faded-to-violet zestily proclaimed “If she has Sprint for a cellphone carrier, she’s too poor for you bruh”.
Excellent! Original (according to a quick search). Funny use of the “if she ___ then she’s too young for you, man” meme. And posted by someone I went to high school with in 3020 B.C.
Perfect! In a flood of random memories about this person (to be honest, most of them were just Jimmy Bussey saying his name a lot, which was distinctive because he’s not a name sayer in general but with this one dude on the basketball team – whom I guess I have to name in order to properly report this memory montage – named Katel would be on his lips every excuse there was. He was all like “yo Kay-Tell!” and “aw, how you gonna do me like that Kay-tel?” and “isn’t that right, Kay-Tell? and “oh, not with Kay-Tell. I don’t think so”. -Strange, right? I wish you had available the audio and video clips that went along with those in my memory reel cuz you’d enjoy it much more).
Filled with the spirit of generosity and good deed doing, I tapped the laughy-guy emoji in the Like menu and leaned back with my palms at the back of my skull at the accomplishment of going out of my way to give my reward. It felt good to reconnect with someone from a long time ago, even if in the most basic and background possible ways of doing so. It felt good to let them know that I read what they posted, I thought it was funny, and I wanted to say so. Who knows – maybe we’d become best friends after this small interaction of approval? Or maybe he won’t even notice my name but he’ll still see one more “haha” face to something he posted and either end of that spectrum and anywhere in between is good enough for me. I had done a great thing and the results are in the hands of the universe now. Today, was a good day!
He unfriended me 4 hours later.
So this made me realize… you know that thing I said earlier about how nice it is to show someone that you appreciate what they’re putting out there? I’m only saying that as a content creator… Civilians who crack jokes on social media aren’t usually looking for an audience and often don’t welcome one, as they feel weird about being watched by someone they hadn’t imagined was in the small group of people likely to be watching. Which makes sense why so many people will apologize to me for “stalking” my pictures and say stuff like “sorry for being creepy, but [and then say something entirely pleasant about content I posted months or years ago]” and up until now I’ve always thought how little sense this makes cuz – duh – that’s like, the whole point of social media is to have people consume what you’re producing… Someone saying “sorry for being creepy, but I liked something you did” made no sense to me until just now when I thought of Katel from high school seeing that he got a notice on his status that Richard Mart liked and went “who tf is this and why is he liking my post?” and then felt so uncomfortable about it that he wanted to ensure that this crossing-of-paths never happened on Facebook again.
This inspired me.
What better thing to do with this new revelatory perspective than exploit it a hundred times over.
I went to the app that notifies me when my Facebook friends get rid of me and opened the profiles of the most recent 12 unfrienders, scrolled through their recent feed items and Liked the best ones. Legitimately the best ones, too – not just their recent posts to be a weirdo, but the ones that deserved it.
So even though they don’t want to ever share their posts with me again in the future – my farewell was to approve of their good work before I fade into the distant irrelevance of a forgotten wasteland like Bing Bong [from Pixar’s Inside Out – not a spoiler that ruins anything, don’t worry] – my last act of interaction in their digital lives – to say “Good job” and then fade away forever.
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