I love Facebook.
I’m on it several times a day. I keep in touch with friends, play Scrabble, monitor my business page and Agent 1.22 page, and more. Lately I’ve been making an effort to keep my interaction at a minimum during office hours , but those damn little red flags just keep sucking me back in, you know?
Anyway, I’ve developed three new habits on Facebook. I’m not sure if they’re good habits or bad habits, but I’ll let you decide…
1) I may not accept your friend request. I used to accept pretty much anyone. Nowadays I screen them much more thoroughly. For starters, we must have multiple friends in common. However, if we’ve never met, aren’t in the same industry, and/or don’t share a common background (location, schooling, etc.) then Mutual Friends don’t matter. There are some people out there who “collect” voiceover friends and they’re not in the industry. Creepy! If you don’t know me and want to follow my exploits, please Like my business page instead.
One of my best friends has an interesting Facebook Friend policy; if she won’t hug you in real life, she won’t be your friend on Facebook.
2) As soon as I accept your friend request, I will most likely un-follow you. I have well over 2,000 friends on Facebook and I know about half of them in real life. That mean my News Feed is clogged with cat photos, memes, political opinions, selfies, game requests, and what you made for lunch. I love you all, but I don’t care!
To further combat this, if one of your posts comes up on my News Feed and it’s politically charged, religiously proselytizing, bigoted, or just plain gross, I’m un-following you and quite possibly un-friending you. Since I have started this practice, reading my News Feed has become a much more pleasurable experience. Now I can see interesting things that my real-life friends are up to without panning for gold.
3) When I get a notification that’s it’s your birthday, I may un-friend you. Sounds mean, right? Hear me out!
I average about three to five birthday notifications a day. I’ve always wished everyone a Happy Birthday on Facebook, but now I take it as a opportunity to review our “friendship”. If we have been Facebook friends for more than a year, have never met in real life, and have not interacted on Facebook, I’m un-friending you. The odds are you won’t notice or care anyway!
To see how much you’ve interacted with someone on Facebook, go to the person’s profile page. In the bottom-right corner of their cover photo you’ll see a box with three dots (I assume it’s an ellipsis). Click on that box and click “See Friendship”. Now you can see your mutual Friends, mutual Likes, photos the both of you have been in, and what you’ve posted on each other’s Walls. Cool, huh?
TIP OF THE WEEK
Am I a jerk for implementing these policies? A cold, unfeeling, un-Facebooky Facebooker-er? Maybe, but it’s my Facebook experience and I want it enjoy it as much as possible. I mean, for Pete’s sake, a few weeks ago someone posted a picture of a horse being eviscerated!!! Do I really need to see that?
The vast majority of people who send me friend invitations are voice talents that I’ve never met. Does that mean I’m losing out on networking opportunities? Nope! I have never recommended a voice talent for a gig nor been recommended that I have not met in person.
Facebook is great. It’s wonderful on many levels, but it is no substitute for real friendship and should not be taken seriously on that level. If I un-friend you if we’ve never met, why should you care? And if I un-friended you on Facebook and we know each other in real life, rest assured it is for a very good reason.
NEWS AND NOTES!
My next Edge Studio “Business and Money 201” webinar is Thursday, September 17 @8PM EST. The topic: Paperwork. We’re gonna talk about, well, paperwork! Click here to sign up.
I got a great review from SF Crow’s Nest for The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 7. You can read the review here and check out a sample of the audio book here.
HAPPY HAPPYS!
Happy Apple Dumpling Day and Roald Dahl Day! Roald Dahl is one of my all-time favorite authors. My favorite book of his is “Danny the Champion of the World”. Fun fact: he wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
If all babies are pretty, then why are there so many ugly people in the world? Charles Barkley
From my village to yours; this is Tom Dheere, GKN News…
Tom Dheere is a 19-year veteran of the voice over industry who has narrated thousands of projects for clients in over a dozen countries. He is also a coach at Edge Studio, voiceover business consultant known as the Voice Over Strategist, and is currently writing & producing the comic book “Agent 1.22”.