People like to complain about Facebook. Every couple of months, a story surfaces about the sordid underbelly of…algorithms. Or paying to reach fans. Or a story gone viral which was untrue.
I read an article about what happens when you Like something on Facebook, which laid out everything we’ve learned and experienced over our long partnership with this particular social media. Yes, you do certain things to make it work for you. No, it is not as simple as it looks (or perhaps as it should be).
But it got me thinking. The more we Like people’s pics and statuses, the more they show up. The more we Like articles from organizations, the more likely those will turn up in our feed. I know if I ignore my sister’s pics (because, say, I’m liking them on Instagram and have this thing about one Like per original media), I’m going to start seeing less of my sister’s news. I often Like things simply to encourage Facebook to continue showing those people in my feed.
Which is exactly how I want to live life offline, as well. The more I focus on what I like, what I want in my life, the more I will encourage it to show up. The more I ignore, say, characters from reality TV (by not watching the shows, not conversing with friends about them, not reading magazine articles, not using pop culture references of theirs), the less those characters show up in the feed of my life.
But if I decide to focus on, for instance, peacocks, the more peacocks I realize I see. It’s confirmation bias: you notice what you expect to see. (There may be some Law of Attraction in there, but I’m not that far along.)
Try curating the feed of your life by Liking what you want to see more of and ignoring what you don’t. Be intentional. Facebook doesn’t read your mind: it notices your clicks; and life requires focus in order to change.
My time investment often goes to things that don’t matter because I want to save really important things for when I have the quality time to focus. But all that gets me is free time filled with the life equivalent of Buzzfeed articles.
I’m going to curate my life more intentionally, starting with reducing the negativity. Is it really going to help me to know what the ten most hated words of 2014 were? How about the unbelievably insensitive thing some ignorant media person said? Or the reason that our generation is horrible, lazy, apathetic, or devoid of empathy?
Do I really need to expend the effort to get mad or defend my side? No. There are millions of other people doing that for me.
I’m going to go Like some organic tea and focus on Edgar. Maybe do art. Practice learning a language.
All that energy not spent on being outraged has got to go somewhere.
