On the "Block"

Social media is an odd beast.
I'm a pretty open person, and generally speaking I don't often contemplate the implications of my openness. I say what I feel when I feel it. Every once in a while though I DO stop and think about it and usually when I do I have one of those "WHOA!" moments. Last night was one of those times.
I was winding down from a long, highly emotional day and I had hopped on twitter to say my usual goodnight. As I was getting ready to set my phone down I started to think about who might actually be reading that tweet and I realized that I had no idea who MANY of those people were and it struck me funny. I started to think about how open I am and it seemed strange to me that so many of the people potentially reading about my life have never sought to make any real connection with me. The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable it made me.
The majority of the people following me probably started following because of the NKOTB connection. I do tweet a lot about them and I'm often able to pass on info that other fans want to see. I get that. I'm cool with that. I enjoy helping other people in that way. If that was all that I use twitter for I would never question who follows me or why because it would be pretty obvious. A lot of fans use twitter that way. I'm not one of those fans.
Twitter for me is a place where I share my thoughts and connect with people who may share similar interests and ideas. Sometimes my thoughts are related to NKOTB, but often I'm sharing things that are far more personal. I do so openly and sincerely with the hope that someone reading those thoughts might actually be able to relate in some way. So far this blind trust has served me well and I've made a lot of very dear friends.
However, people aren't always so kind. Sometimes people are even downright mean. 
So I was thinking about my style of tweeting and about how many people are potentially reading about my life and I got a little creeped out about it. Then I started wondering what I could possibly do about it.
Going private would make absolutely no difference as it would only prevent NEW followers from seeing my tweets without first asking permission. It would have no effect on the hundreds of strangers already following me. I've tweeted several times before asking people to reach out and say hello to me. It isn't practical for me to attempt to follow everyone who follows me. I'd never be able to sort through all of the tweets to find the ones that mean something to me. However I DO answer people who tweet me. If you say hello, or reply to something I tweet I can almost guarantee that I will respond. Sometimes I miss stuff, but I don't think it happens very often. I could continue to beg people to reach out...but that didn't seem practical either.
The next logical option to me was to cull through my list of followers and block anyone I'm completely unfamiliar with. That seemed a little harsh to me though and I wasn't 100% comfortable with doing that either. I did it once in the past and ended up feeling like a jerk as soon as I was done. 
At that point I was out of ideas but I was still feeling like something needed to change. I decided that warning my followers of my plan ahead of time was the only way I could feel ok about it. I tweeted that I was considering blocking people and asked people to just send a tweet & make themselves known to me if they wanted to be able to continue following. I had no intention of discriminating against anyone willing to take the 2 seconds to say "Hey! I'm paying attention, don't block me please"
As soon as I tweeted I noticed that I had lost a follower. I was curious about why someone would choose to unfollow in that moment instead of just saying hello, so I checked to find out WHO unfollowed and then paid a quick visit to her page to see if I could find any clues. I discovered the following tweets...


"If you don't want people to follow you, then make your account private. Don't block people for no reason. Especially if you've never interacted with those people before."
and then in response to someone asking her what she was upset about...
"Not really pissed off. Just irritated. "favorites" who want to be recognized get pissed when people they don't know follow them. it's one thing to not follow back but to automatically block someone? C'mon now, just make your shit private."
and to another person...
"if they're spammers, totally! But if I follow someone because they seem to always have good pics, why should I be blocked?"

My initial response was anger. Who was this person to judge me so harshly? I also felt hurt because this was exactly the type of reaction that I had been trying so hard to avoid. So I decided the best course of action was to respond directly to her regarding her accusations. She replied and we were able to resolve our differences quite civilly.


I also received several tweets from people doing exactly what I asked- reaching out and saying hello. People letting me know that even though they may not respond to my tweets they are paying attention and want to continue to do so. I responded to each and every one of those people. I visited their twitter pages as well in an effort to get to know at least a little bit about them in return for their interest in me. I encouraged them to continue to say hello on occasion because to me that is what twitter is all about. That's what makes it fun!


I decided that the best thing for me to do was sleep on it. The last thing I wanted to do was act without thinking things through. This morning when I woke up I felt a little bit more clear headed and made the decision that blindly blocking people just because I don't know them is not what I'm about. It's actually the polar opposite of what I'm about.


In spite of what the anonymous twit (and probably many others) believe...I do not "want to be recognized" for being a "favorite". What I want is to engage with as many people in this crazy world of ours as I can. I want to find common ground, hear other opinions, argue, learn, laugh, cry, love, share....


So I guess if it makes people more comfortable to anonymously "stalk" me that's their prerogative. As long as no one is actively trying to hurt me I have no cause to hit the block button. However, I do HOPE that more people choose to interact in the future.


Cheers
xoxo