“You blocked me!”
I got that message from a Facebook friend. She tried to comment on a post and couldn’t because I had blocked her ability to do so. She sent me a message asking why.
She is not the first person I’ve blocked. But she is the first person who has ever asked me about it. It was awkward.
This person, whom I’ve known for more than 20 years, has a penchant for taking digs at the wrong time. The post she wanted to comment on was about hanging in the yard with my son while he played with the water hose. So, it could have gone several ways.
She wanted to know if she had offended me. I told her that she doesn’t comment often, but when she does, it seems like she’s taking shots at me. She apologized and thanked me for responding. No name-calling. Nothing ugly.
I’m not going to reinstate her ability to comment. And I’m not going to see if she’s blocked me now. It’s done. This is just another example of how social media is whatever you want it to be. But there are still personalities, feelings and friendships involved. No matter how distant you think you might be from someone, they’re your social media friend thanks to some connection.
Do you have any social media awkwardness to share?
Image from Islamic Lawyers’ Movement
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I blocked my brother who frequently makes inappropriate or mean-spirited comments on photos or status updates. While I love him, I don’t love his sense of humor. He thinks he’s the best comedian ever while others were sometimes shocked at his words. He was hurt when I blocked him and told me I was taking it too seriously. Since then I’ve noticed his comments on other pages have been more tame, but I still haven’t changed my settings. Have to keep peace in the family.
I’ve had to turn off Facebook chat. It seems every time I was on I would get a message from a girl that I had in Sunday School a few years ago. I was the teacher, she was in 11th grade. Every chat was a carbon copy of the first, ‘how have you been’, ‘that’s cool’, etc. It got real annoying. Once I knew I could turn off the chat feature I did and now she only bothers me with the occasional email with the same questions. Her dad and I are good friends so I don’t feel right telling her to leave me alone. I figure it’s one of the drawbacks to social media but there are so many positives I’ll just put up with it.
There was the evening I received a call (at work) from somebody who eventually asked me why I didn’t follow them on Twitter. There were some other things discussed, but this person took it as an insult that I didn’t follow them, but I was following (at the time) about 700 others.
This person is the PR point of an international company whom I’d met in person once or twice before. I’m a new media journalist who follows either friends, other journalists who cover topics that interest me or other media wonks. I specifically chose not to follow this person because of their ties to the company. I just didn’t want to have PR from this company in my stream since I didn’t cover their company or industry, but this person took it personal.
Regardless, I still never followed them even after their call (at 9 p.m., I should add).
Thank you all for your comments. I have actually created two Facebook accounts. One is for the stuff I do with social media at work. The other is for me. I used to administer pages from my personal account, but some of my friends didn’t really project the image I’m sure clients wanted in a Facebook administrator. I’m not giving up my friends, nor my job, so I found a fix.