A friend asked on his page, what are our criteria for unfriending and/or blocking a person?
Since I use social media so much for work, I come into contact with a wide variety of people and prefer to keep it that way.
As some people pointed out, many people will choose to toss us in the bin, often for differences of political beliefs or other beliefs. But I rarely block or unfriend.
That’s pretty much my approach. I’ve definitely been tossed into the bin more than on occasion, and I suspect it’s often because of political differences.
I can’t say I haven’t blocked/unfriended anybody, but I rarely do. My criterion is if I’m feeling persistently abused or disliked by the person, and I’m not able to find a way to get the person to talk things out with me.
Now, as for choosing connections on Facebook, that is a pretty wide field.
It can be old friends I know in real life.
It can also be new people I meet in real life who seem cool.
But most often, it tends to be colleagues or just people who are in community activism circles and/or entrepreneurial circles, and we have information and resources to share with each other.
That makes for an extremely wide field! I am happy that I have rarely found a reason to have to unfriend or block anyone, despite it being such a wide field of personalities.
And — to look at it through a permaculture design lens, edge is where the life is.
Edge is any place where different ecosystems come together; where divergent ideas come together; where different people come together.
It’s no accident that food and other resources tend to be most abundant at the edges between forest and meadow; between land and river (or ocean); and so on.
The best ideas, too, tend to emerge from the “edges.” Even though it’s not cozy and comfortable there, it’s very fertile.