Over-Posting on Facebook

A certain member of an elected Board emailed me to say that she did not appreciate my point of view as written in my blog and therefore no longer cared to receive it online. Which is when I  wrote back to her to say that that was the purpose for which the delete button on her keyboard was designed. She had free will.  And I had no ability to reach through her computer and make her read anything that she did not care to read.

This past Saturday two experts of differing viewpoints sat in the plush interview chairs of the Weekend Today Show: a 40ish blond woman, and a 30-something male. The subject matter was social media. The woman was an Emily Post of sorts—offering what she deemed was the appropriate weekly number and type of posting for ones’ newsfeed.

She claimed that one post per week was the golden number—anything more than that was simply tasteless. She quipped Is there really anything so interesting in a person’s everyday life that warrants them typing it in the “what’s on your mind” box more often than that?

And that is when the man went a little bit ballistic. He thought that he had at least one interesting newsworthy event to post every day and that if people were disinterested in his newsfeed then they should simply not read it. He suggested that people who are annoyed by the frequency of others’ postings were merely haters who resented their own tedious lives.

His point was that it isn’t that people over-post, as much as it is that other people over-read.

And no surprise here but I am completely okay with people who might be considered overpost-ers. I accept it as an unforeseen consequence of agreeing to a friend request. I actually prefer the overpost-er to the underpost-er. 

    

 I am more apt to think What keeps a person from sharing photos and links with any kind of regularity? Are they afraid—and if so, what of? What makes them unable to at least hit the “like” button from time to time?

I wonder if there is a direct mathematical relationship between the level of a person’s security or insecurity and the quantity of their postings.

And that elected official would have been better served had she embraced differing opinions. In fact her constituents would have been better served as well. Closed circuits allow for no bursts of brilliance. Still water yields a stagnant pool; stagnant pools breed decay. Yet too much information increases only the odds that some of it may be of very significant interest and value.  At worst, even broken clocks are correct once a day.

Which is why I never honored that elected officials request and continued to send her my blog online until the day she left office. Because everyone has free will---including me. And I would not be bullied into under-sending or under-telling.