Skip to main content

Online friendship

A post I just made on Facebook:

Dear friends.
Over the past few weeks, I've been realising that I've been spending way too long on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
Part of the reason for this is because of all the time I put into "friendships".
I thought I could reduce my number of Facebook friends from over 1,000 to 150 in one go, but after 3 go's last night I am at 473 friends.
The 150 comes from one of Malcolm Gladwell's books where he says that it is impossible to have a true relationship with more than 150 people. For example a "company" in the army is usually 150 people for this reason.
Well maybe 150 was the optimal number when the book was written or when personal relationships required physical presence and time.
This is the 21st Century and who knows, maybe things have changed? Maybe 500 is workable now. And especially bearing in mind the approximately 8,000 contacts I still have in total on all my networks.
But on Facebook I want to have my real friends, the people I share personal stuff with, whilst my other networks can be business.
I know that for me the lines between business and personal are blurred. My life is my work. But I don't live to work. And I don't work to live. I have "become". And I do tend to share personal stuff at work, so who knows what I'm really saying here? Perhaps just that I want to put more time into fewer friends.
So I'm happy to be under 500 on Facebook.
I'll see how this works out and then if necessary I'll go through the reduction process again.
I only want to be friends with people who interact with me. Not just because you are my family or my cousin or my friend from school, who perhaps I talk to once a year or see at parties.
So if you want to unfriend me because you feel that "I'm not contributing to our relationship" then that's ok with me.
Love
David.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Repair Your World: Solving the electricity crisis at no tax cost to the treasury

My latest letter to the Cape Times editor. Melanie Gosling's articles this week and NERSA today (24th February 2010) approving 25% increases (95% over 3 years) refer. My company has a number of clients who wish to provide their own energy. We don't believe that we can rely on Eskom energy. It isn't sustainable. It isn't clean. Not only is coal polluting the air, mining it is polluting our water resources and destroying our roads. If we weren't in a recession Eskom energy wouldn't be enough for our requirements, so there is no true security of supply, especially as Eskom has not got the increase they wanted. Lastly, in the medium to long term, Eskom's energy is not affordable for our clients and there are already affordable alternatives. However, most of the clients we consult to are too small to fit into the 1 Megawatt bracket which gets the feed in tariff (REFIT). And the REFIT itself is a farce because the government has implemented a tender system w...
5 comments
Read more

Preventing Load Shedding (Power Failures)

Dear all There are a few very simple ways of preventing load sheeting and potentially preventing the building of any more power stations in South Africa: 1) Switch off all appliances at the plug including computers, tv's, etc, when they are not being used. If it is inconvenient to get to the plug, use an extension cord from the wall and plug the plug in the wall into the extension cord. You can then unplug the plug at any time. 2) Don't run more than one of the following appliances at the same time: washing machine, dish washer, iron, lawnmower, kettle, microwave, kitchen mixer, oven/stove. 3) Switch off your playstation when it is not in use; same with your DSTV decoder. Both draw almost as much power when they are on standby as when they are on, so if you only watch 3 hours of TV a day, you are wasting electricity for the other 21 hours. 4) Try to use a laptop instead of a PC. Laptop's can save up to 95% of the electricity that PC's use. 5) If you use air-conditio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Designing your own electricity system - part 7 (fridges)

Here are some specifications regarding energy saving fridges. Tafelberg sell some of the Ardo range of fridges. The Ardo rating is: 130KWH rating per year. Even if it really uses 165KWH per year, that will be amazing as an A++ energy star fridge is rated at 380KWH per year and a normal fridge much higher than that. My normal fridge (which I still need to replace) uses approximately 660 kwh per year which at 70 cents per kwh (my rate) is about R40 per month. Note that this is only based on one day's usage. After a few months, I will have a more accurate number. The Ardo fridge uses about 40Watts when it is on and is so quiet that a friend on mind has it in his passage outside two of the bedrooms. At 165kwh per year , the Ardo fridge costs R10 per month. A normal fridge is about R2000 and an Ardo fridge is about R8000. The difference is R6000, so R6000 / R30 (saving) = 200 months = 17 years. Not a very good payback period, but remember what I said in an earlier part of this blog s...
Post a Comment
Read more