I unfollow cause they're sooooo nosy i hate it haha!
I don't really use social media networks that much such as Facebook. Facebook is such a boomer thing, am I right? But anyways, I used to use Facebook in my early childhood but just dropped it. I found that social media was just a waste of time and I'd be mindlessly scrolling through things. I am pretty sure that was some effect to it my mental health. No I haven't blocked any family members, but I did have to block an online friend before. He proposed a business to me for hacking OSRS and I did it as a side thing, but then he intended for me to keep going at it, and to work on it everyday (almost the entire day). While the pay was nice, the work hours weren't and he kept bugging me about it, so I removed him off Facebook.
I unfollow cause they're sooooo nosy i hate it haha!
Facebook has to be the worst. False info being spread everywhere a bunch of karens posting lol
unfortunately yes, my family hates science - im scientist - and is extremely homophobic - i'm gay -
but in the end, it's okay.
graphics by Flordibel & Menine <3
I definitely have blocked/removed my parents from my social media and being able to contact me. I�ve had very rocky on and off relationships with my parents, unfortunately. I�ve had to cut my parents temporarily out of my life by blocking their numbers and all social media a few times during my adult life so far.
Currently everything is fine, but I do not have my parents on Instagram or Twitter. I have blocked them/�hidden� my profiles from them. I don�t need a way for my mother to snoop/watch over my life, which is what she used to do when I lived at home. She would go through my messages/emails/social media accounts like crazy. She would analyse and judge every single thing I said and did. It was exhausting and so damaging and negative to my mental health. I hated how controlling it was, and it made me feel like I couldn�t express who I was and I felt like I had no voice or control in my own life. Which, as a teenager, is super frustrating for a few different reasons. It affected a lot of my friendships as well. My mother was always so suspicious of me and my friends, so I often wasn�t allowed to see my friends or connect with them online; but we weren�t bad kids. We didn�t party, drink or do drugs. We just wanted to do normal teen stuff: go to the mall and shop, watch movies, have sleepovers, etc. I felt like I was a little kid who wasn�t allowed to use the internet and lived in a bubble.
My mother also is one of those women who shares cringey minion memes, as well as misinformation/fake facts and random dumb Pinterest shit. It�s just... so �live laugh love� of her.
Anyways. Now that I�m approaching my 30s, I�ve learned how to better create boundaries and how to stand up for myself, if need be. I�ve made the conscious choice to not have my parents on Instagram (which is my favourite platform), but I do have them on Facebook. That way they can see only the very, very small snippets of my life that I save for extended family and coworkers/not super close friends. That�s all I use Facebook for nowadays. And for uploading photos I don�t put on Instagram, because ~feed aesthetic~ or their family photos and I do not mix family and IG together. Period.
TL;DR I didn�t have the best relationship with my family, so I keep them at an arm�s length on all social media.
maya (12-06-2020),♥ PrettySarcastic ♥ (10-15-2020)
I've definitely had to block family members on Facebook. It's the worst of the three major social media platforms that I'm on. Facebook seems to appeal to conservative evangelicals (of which some of my family falls into this category, rifp). Instagram seems to be where all of my "why can't we all just get along" people who don't want to talk about social issues and want to pretend that the United States isn't a raging dumpster fire have flocked to. And then there is Twitter, which soothes my progressive, leftist AF soul. I don't generally have issues on the latter two.
Facebook, tho...urgh...lol...
So far on Facebook, I've blocked an aunt, two uncles, two cousins, and probably like...10 family members who I'm not really sure how I'm related but they're somehow like...my grandma's cousin or something, idek lol. Also probably 25+ people from my hometown (friends of family, people I went to school with, etc.).
I also ended a relationship with two former best friends after Friend 1.) I posted a Pride month "reminder that I'm not straight!" post and her husband unfriended me (that was a fun convo and finding out she's NOT an ally at all lol) and Friend 2.) getting into an argument with her husband re: Jacob Blake's shooting, after hours of his whataboutisms and covert racism and mine (and 4 others') very polite educational opportunity they deleted me �\_(ツ)_/�
So anyway, back to my family � I traveled to several countries and eventually moved 5000 miles away in 2013, and became a "communist" (they literally have never taken the time to understand my political leanings) according to them (my grandparents, namely, lmfao). Since then, we've gotten along less and less. I have talked to my father, grandmother, and grandfather probably less than 5x total since I left my hometown in 2013. The only person who I've kept in frequent contact with in my life family-wise is my mother, who isn't perfect, but at the very least tries to learn why social issues are...issues.
Although I definitely would never write or call, I kept in minimal contact with my family via FB since moving away, but in 2016 things became unbearable. I started getting into arguments with my alt-right family members who had little else to say to me than to direct the term "socialist" at me as an attack because I worked on the Bernie campaign.
Not to mention, I think I was your typical case of internalize homophobia up until 2013-2014 or so, and then started considering..."hey, I might not be straight." In 2018, I publicly came out as pansexual on my FB and to said family/friends. So from there on out it kind of became like...ok, cool, then I can take anyone still riding the current administration's dick as a blatant show of non-support now that I was publicly out as part of the LGBTQIA+ community lol.
It took me several years more from there even to realize that I don't just disagree with my family on simply politics, I disagree with them on basic human rights issues. Like, somehow scorning me personally for being pan was fine (my privilege showing, no doubt) and I kept them around "because they're family" but their entirely non-empathetic, dismissive takes on hot topics such as BLM and COVID this year have been the final straw.
I try very hard to educate and be patient because I also came from this radical, intolerant environment (and I had to unlearn so much, am still always learning and educating myself, and yet have changed so much already), but these past few years have taught me that these people I'm dealing with are not open to learning opportunities or amicable conversations because they don't understand empathy. I on the other hand, feel too much and not understanding why they can't understand is maddening to me. It's historically led me to be horrible with boundaries, so if there is a silver lining of turning 30 and 2020 as a whole, it's that it's brought me the ability to be unafraid to understand that I owe these people who are so adamantly against mine and my friends' interests nothing, contact is awful for my mental health, and that it's OK to end relationships, even with family members.
I've since mostly filled back in my Facebook friends' list with random internet people (mostly found in tag groups, shitposting and memes groups, even Neopets groups, etc.) who keep my news feed far more pleasant than my family ever did.
♥ PrettySarcastic ♥ (10-15-2020)
I don't use Facebook, I really only have it so that I can sign into other things more easily and occasionally to look at the marketplace. In the past I've blocked and deleted people who were family or family friends who said shit or shared opinions that were way out of line. I'm not really that hesitant to withdraw from people in general who do the wrong thing, or think the wrong thing. I don't have many people in my life to begin with so it's not that much of a difference to have one less I guess, and I'm very much so a quality over quantity person.
I'm also a big believer in curating your experience online in general and don't feel like anyone should feel bad about using block buttons, they're there for a reason, and your health and piece of mind should come before hurting someone's follower count or whatever.
I've actually also actively closed down accounts I've had or just stopped using them if there were several people who had tracked it down that I wanted nothing to do with (I used to be really bad at saying no to anything or even declining friend/follow requests), most recent being that I feel I can't really upload to my youtube because people from my last job found it who I'd rather have nothing to do with. That's nothing political or anything, that's just me wanting distance from a job that made me miserable, although sectarianism is rife here in Scotland so me being Pagan I also kinda consider that because I'm not giving people my energy because they want to argue with my beliefs.
It's not as much of a hardline stance as it sounds like though because I literally never knew many people so it was never going to be as big of an issue for me as it would be for someone who knew lots of people. It's one of the few ways that being a shy introverted person makes things easier. I might have literally no friends besides my Fiance but that doesn't mean I'll tolerate people who are hateful.
Last edited by BoopnDoot; 10-09-2020 at 11:46 AM.
♥ PrettySarcastic ♥ (10-15-2020)
As a "closeted" LGBTIQ, I need to be very careful between my named and anonymous profiles. I have blocked a few close friends/family on Twitter to prevent them from seeing my profile, and I sometimes temporarily go private if I think someone will visit.
I also have the type of parents who will look at a Facebook post and interrogate me about it, so I never post anything.
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