I discovered this thing recently: my daughter explained to me that it is very difficult, under penalty of creating a diplomatic incident or being ostracized, to unsubscribe from someone or to remove them from their BeReal or Snapchat or Instagram when you are between 15 and 25 years old.
I was stunned! If you don’t want to see your ex-boyfriend with his new girlfriend, if you don’t want to be in contact with a friend who betrayed you or a colleague who is a little too intrusive, you have to have courage and determination. You really have to be determined to “flush” someone from their social networks or unsubscribe from someone’s network, because the repercussions can be enormous… Young people are as much on the lookout for “who dumped them as who follows them”; it’s crazy, right?
I’m in my 50s, my medium is Facebook only. I know I’m not so in. It is true that I have already rubbed shoulders with this about ten years ago. I had blocked a friend, because I wanted to express an opinion on my wall and I was afraid to hurt her a little. By blocking it for 48 hours, I told myself that I would spare it…
What a mistake ! It only took an hour before she realized that I had blocked her. I couldn’t believe it! For my part, it takes me weeks before I realize that someone has removed me from their Facebook…
Ten years later, my Facebook is very private. I remove who I want when I want without problem. But the strength of age speaks…
For young people, it’s a whole different story. My daughter tells me that you really have to ask yourself the question and think twice before removing someone from your networks or withdrawing from someone’s network. I kind of feel like you should think twice about putting it there or subscribing to it.
If people get angry, feel targeted or misinterpret the fact that everyone has the right to use their “contact book” as they see fit, I understand why relations between people have never been so bad.
For me, it is clearly a fundamental right and others should have the maturity to accept it.
It’s like taking a lifetime contract when you have a new subscriber or “friend”. Moreover, if you subscribe to someone, you expect them to subscribe to you in return, otherwise, it is very badly seen or badly interpreted, hence the impossibility of unsubscribe afterwards.
Everyone spies on everyone and everyone counts his subscribers religiously, seeing who is faithful to him or not, finding there glorification and popularity. I wouldn’t want to be stuck in not being able to withdraw or “flush” whenever I want, however I want, without creating an incident.
I dare to hope that the maturity as well as the relativity of things will make their way one day in order to demonstrate the futility of such behaviors which abrogate everyone’s freedom to dispose of their contacts as they see fit, without malicious intent… here, my daughter and many others will be prisoners of unwanted contact, because sometimes you pick your battles and peace tastes so much better.