At least that’s what the song says, right? And I agree. Friends are a good thing; however not all friends are created equal. You have those friends from way back before elementary school. They’re the ones who can say one nonsensical word and immediately send you into a ten minute fit of belly laughs (you know who you are, and I love you dearly!). The high school and college friends are just as special. All of these amazing people have seen you at your best and your worst. Some have held beer bongs for you, others have held your hair back for you when you’ve done one too many beer bongs. They’ve been there through the crushes, boyfriends and break ups. You support each other even when you don’t fully agree, and you never say “I told you so” (well, at least not in a mean or malicious way) when shit goes sideways. The love and support usually come in the form of dessert, coffee, cocktails, or just a random giraffe meme that says “i love you”. Either way, there’s no judging. Just pure, unconditional friendship.
As you get older, your friends are the ones who are co-workers, gym buddies, sports moms, and anyone else with like minded interests. Some of these friends can become just as special and close as the ones from your earlier years. Others are the ones you see out at all the gatherings and you catch up with them, have lots of laughs and then promise to meet for lunch or dinner in the future.
Some friendships weren’t meant to last. Some friends are in your life just for a short time. You fall out of touch or it all goes to hell for stupid judgements and misunderstandings and then one day you find a seven page Word document in your email inbox chock-full of reasons why you’re a horrible person. Yes, that actually happened to me and I admit I’m still upset about it, I mean who does that? But I digress…
Where was I? Oh yes, the entire reason for this article…Social Media friends. We all have them, and we seem to feed off of them, placing more weight than necessary. Why do we do that? We have “real world” friends (remember the ones who support you, make you laugh and hold your hair back when you’ve had too many cocktails?). Social Media has become a way of life for most of us. We share everything from photos to recipes to life events and everything else in between. Does it make us feel more important or more loved to have a large following of Social Media friends?
When you join any Social Media platform, you are pretty much committing to putting at least some of your personal life out there. And while you can place privacy restrictions on a lot of your posts, it’s still out there for anyone deemed special enough to see. In this case, is more followers better? And that was a rhetorical question by the way. I know each of you have your own answer, opinion and/or processes.
For me, I think it all depends on the type of account (business or personal) and of course the age old debate of quality versus quantity. We can all agree though, without Social Media friends, your posts mean nothing.
