Fed...

-
Feed. Now I know why it's called that. Cut and arranged (arbitrarily?) into bite-size pieces, my friends' updates are fed to me on Facebook,  as though I'm an infant or geriatric, incapable of working the spoon myself.
I have over 100 friends on Facebook,  but I see updates from the same handful of people. Some of these people are virtually strangers to me, (some of them ARE strangers!) while close friends and relatives, who I actually love and would like to stay in touch with, are left in the cold dark of the refrigerator.
At first, I thought the reason I didn't see updates from Jo, for example,  was because she wasn't active. Then, for some random reason (maybe a birthday), I looked at her profile page, and there it all was - morsels of information, like a buffet that had been hidden from me.
I went through more of my friends profile pages, and it was the same story. It makes no sense.
I know that a certain Facebook friend of mine has recently been on a road trip. I've seen all his updates and photos. I do like that sort of thing, travelling vicariously. But I don't really know this person. He's not related to me in any way.  I met him once at a party, many years ago, and we sang a duet on Sing Star. Nice man. That's it. The information of his experiences has nothing to do with me personally. It doesn't even stir in me the necessary desire to hit the Like button. I could read a National Geographic artical or watch a travel programme to achieve the same result. Whatever the primary objective of Facebook might be, I'm certain it is not to be like a magazine article. 
As an experiment, I've decided to hide from my feed everyone I see there regularly. It will be a temporary measure. I'm intrigued to see what, or who, the Mommy/nurse mechanism chooses to feed me next.
(Here's a link from my (genuine) friend, Tim Weaver - http://blog.bufferapp.com/understanding-facebook-news-feed-algorithm . I'm including it here to make known my awareness of it. It doesn't apply.)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First Home Essentials - A Checklist

-
Image
My lovely daughter has just moved into her first proper home - her own place, a grown up, unfurnished, one bedroomed flat. We've talked about everthing a person needs when moving into their first home - the essential, basic stuff, like a bed and a duvet, scissors and a spoon (at the very least a spoon). So I looked to see if there was such a list online. I found some ridiculous ones, like this one , which lists for the kitchen measuring cups and spoons, but not a saucepan. So, I decided to make one, to print and send. The list isn't finished yet, but there will be an empty table on the back for adding items by hand.
Read more

Dark Winter Journey

-
Image
Some time ago, a friend invited me to have my personal colours analysed. This was something I'd thought of before and was keen to try. As I've said before, being very slightly red-green colour blind, I’ve learned to avoid colour and my wardrobe consists overwhelmingly of grey. Marl grey, to be precise. We agreed on a date and were both very excited. My new make up palette. However, almost two weeks ago, on Sunday 18th May, Noah came down with his regular attack of mucus overload. We’ve been given prescriptions by specialist and our family doctor, but nothing can prevent or ease the symptoms of this horrible affliction. Since he was about six months old, he’s had these attacks. It starts with a headache and a runny nose and develops into a state where angling his head past the true vertical incurs a head ache and/or an avalanche of mucus, down the throat, out of the nose or into the ears. It’s horrific, at best causing extreme discomfort, at worst threate...
Read more

My Music Muddle

-
Image
So, I had one of those massive, 4th gen. iPods. It was top of the range at the time, I'd bought it when I was working and it served me exceptionally well for years. I spared no expense on the dock - a beautiful Bose dock with a remote control. I'd download all the music I wanted and I had playlists and everything was hunky dory. 4th Gen iPod with Bose SoundDock Then my iPod died. I needed to replace it, but was now unemployed and couldn't justify spending so much money on something non-essential - I have my phone, right? And that plays music, so why buy a dedicated music player? That was my thinking. So I tried that. Problem #1 is that the phone's not compatible with the iPod dock. We have a sound system, which Noah keeps adjusting the bass on (because it's his sound system!) So every time I go to use it I have to adjust the bass and the thing is behind the sofa. I also need to scrabble around looking for the cable, because it's never in the same p...
Read more