The Great unfriending of 2022

Social media is horrible. Why do you still tolerate bad behavior from people that you follow on Social media. Be brave and unfriend.

Doc David

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey friends, happy twenty twenty two. Uh let's talk about social media. All right, all right. Hey, welcome. It is a uh it is 2022. Wow, we made it to 2022. Um, let's see, what's been going on in my life for the last since I potted last. I think I potted last probably in I should have been more prepared to see when I did it last. But I think it was probably in December or late November. So I again I give lots of excuses. I I just get busy and then I don't have a lot of topics on my mind to podcast about. So that's that's why there's not a recent podcast. Um, but let's see, had Christmas. I was a vacate I vacationed in Florida, um was a part of several super spreader events in Florida, in Disneyland and Universal Studios. And I say super spreader just because there were lots of people around not wearing masks and wearing masks, and um, I did not get COVID. Imagine that. So uh yeah, that was a good time, and then we had Christmas, um, and now it's January, and um my voice maybe sounds a little bit deeper, and the reason that it sounds deeper um is because I got a cold. Now, many people think, oh, you you must have had COVID. And I don't know if I had COVID. Like, I so I mean, just for transparency purposes, I've been vaccinated and uh boosted, and I mean, if you think that's crazy, great. Good for you that you think it's crazy. If you don't want to get vaccinated, okay, don't get vaccinated. I mean, you're gonna get COVID, you're gonna get COVID either way. Um, and so I so I so I got vaccinated, got boosted. My wife's been vaccinated, and she tested positive for COVID. And um I took a test and I can't it didn't test positive, like I was negative for COVID, but I had a lot of the same symptoms that she did. And uh she seems to think I didn't go high up enough in my nose. Now, have you ever done a COVID test? Like, uh at home or in a hospital like there's you gotta go up super who wants to go up that high in their nose? It's like getting um, you know, there's this I think there's a torture thing that used to they used to do where they'd put wood underneath tails. Like think about putting something high up, like towards close to your eyeball. Who wants to do that? And I thought I went up pretty high, like my eyes watered a little bit. So I who knows? I who knows what's going on with the COVID stuff. Um so I oh my connection is unstable. So, what I'm doing today is I'm doing this podcast, but I'm also doing a live stream on YouTube. Um, and this is like my first time doing this, so we'll see how it goes. Um no one watches my YouTube channel, so if I mess up, it doesn't matter, right? Um, but I'm I'm live streaming on YouTube and then I'm doing this podcast at the same time, and we'll see how it goes. Um, if you go to the YouTube channel, you will see me talking into a box right here, and basically my mic is in this sound kind of soundproofy type box because there's uh heating, you can hear the and then if I don't use the box, my voice sounds kind of tinny or like I'm in a can. Maybe it still does, but that's why that's why I have a weird setup. So today I want to talk about um two two of the two of the worst things that have happened to the world. One is McRib sandwiches, and the second is social media. Now, I I have had a McRib sandwich, and it's okay, but it's kind of gross when you think about it. It's just a bunch of meat put together with some kind of glue. Um food food grade glue. I'm assuming you can hear my cough still. I'm assuming that's the case, but um a mcrib, my first McRib was it was tasty, but then I started thinking about it, and like there's no bones in it, and so that that's a disaster to the human race. The second is social media, and so I want to talk about social media today. Um, it's 2022, a lot of people make uh commitments, you know, New Year's New Year's resolutions, and I am not a New Year's resolutions guy because I think that if you want to make change in your life, just start making change, don't wait for um the new year to roll around. Now, maybe the new year inspires you to make change. Well, that's great, then still make the change. But I don't tend to do actual resolutions um on because if I want to change again, if I want to change something in my life, I'm just gonna change it. Um, I'm not gonna wait for a new year to do it. But one of the things I really want to uh encourage you to consider um doing in this new year is unfriending somebody on social media. Here's why I think social media is horrible. There was a time in our lives when we didn't know all the intimate details about other people, we didn't know what food they liked, um, what I mean the biggest ones politics. Politics they followed, what weird thing, conspiracy things they thought, um, any number of things we didn't know about people, and the world was such a better place. Now, um, now you have social media and you know everything about everybody, and everyone has uninformed opinions about things. I was just on a um I was just scrolling through a Facebook page I'm part of today, where someone posts this picture of someone singing a song about vaccinations, and they're like, oh, look at this idiot, what a leftist loser! Oh, give me a break. Who wants to, you know, just insulting this guy who's at a public meeting, singing a song about vaccinations, and he's dressed up in scrubs. Now, if if these people had done a little bit of research, they would have found that this person is a professional troller. So he he um goes to events and he does things to um troll people. Now, the problem with social media is like these people just have these knee-jerk reactions and they don't it makes them look stupid because they didn't do like actual research. That's another problem with uh social media is that I think that um people don't do research, they just react. And I think just reacting to things in life is not usually a good thing. Um, I encourage people to be more proactive, especially with parenting, proactive in your parenting instead of reactive, because reactive, when you're reactive to things, you you often don't make um a good decision, specifically in relationships. Um and I and I'm saying specifically to relationships because there's a lot of jobs like law enforcement jobs, military jobs, where you do have to react, but usually you're trained for that kind of thing. So I'm talking more specifically related to relationships. So here's what here's why I'm thinking about social media, right? So social media um can be super great to keep in contact with people that we care about, to people keep in contact with people um that we're interested in. But where it takes a ugly, where it takes an ugly turn, I believe, is that it keeps us in contact with people that we will never see in our lives who have differences of opinions than us, which isn't a bad thing, but then say things that are rude, hurtful, insulting, uh, and whatever. And so, but yet we for whatever reason feel this need to stay friends with these people. Now, these people we will legitimately never see because um they live far away from us. We, or if they live close, you're not you don't travel in the same social circles. Um you your kids and and my kids don't go to school together. So we'll just never see, but we became friends because one of us made a friend request because maybe we have a mutual friend, or maybe we uh went to school together 20 years ago. Um and so we we got a friend request, and we thought, ah, sure, why not? You know, I went to school with them 20 years ago, but you've never seen them in 20 years, and chances are you'll never see them again in in another 20 years. But for some reason, we stay friends with these people. They say these things that irritate us and annoy us and are offensive to us, and we stay friends, and then we start growing this irritation, we start thinking negative things about them, we start making assumptions about them based on what they post, and we don't do anything about it. Um, and I say collectively. Um, I'm jet, I know I'm generalizing because some of you do do things about it, um, and I and I do things about it, right? So uh recently um there was somebody that I don't interact with that was saying all these like shameful things around vaccination and masking and things like that. And again, for transparency purposes, I'm I'm vaccinated. And so, but I don't think shaming people is a great thing, and for some reason, most people don't think shaming people is good, most people don't would would agree that shame is not a good good thing, but for some reason when it comes to like the current events of COVID and vaccinations, um shaming people is suddenly okay because uh either we have moral superiority because we follow the science or um whatever it is, and so for me, I I it like I saw these posts and I thought, man, that it created this negativity in me, and I just don't want negativity, and so I unfriended them and um and guess what? It feels so it feels great. I mean, I have no regret over unfriending them. That was an easy unfriend, to be honest, and so what I would encourage you to do is like if you have people in your life on social media that are they post something and it it immediately creates this kind of negativity, um, kind of a vibe of negativity for you, um, really consider unfriending them. And um, there's a lot of factors that go into that, right? So the I think for me, at least the biggest factor was uh when am I gonna see this person again? And it's a 95% chance that I will never see this person in my life. And if I do see them, if I do happen to see them, I'm not gonna be rude to them, I'll still be polite to them. Um also like, oh hey, what's going on? But I have no interest, uh, like we just don't have interest in each. We were only Facebook friends because of a similar place that we went to and some shared experiences from years ago. Um now, where you where you might run into some challenges with unfriending is like family members. Um and I've actually been with some family members, and it was mostly because it was it was more about the shame thing, the shame and mocking. And it wasn't um it was related to politics, it wasn't related to the COVID stuff. And I mean, I think I don't shame people and I don't mock people for what they choose to believe in, and I would expect the same respect, or I would expect expect the same kind of treatment from those people, and when I don't get that treatment, I'm willing to tolerate it and just like okay, that's they just have different politics than me. But when it's really pointedly directed um at like specific beliefs that I may have, it is not worth to me, simply because we have similar DNA, it's not worth um being treated poorly, um, passive aggressively, indirectly, whatever you want to call it. So those were easy as well, because those are family members that I interacted with when I was younger, but I haven't seen for years. Um they are family members that have really no influence in my life currently, um, and probably and most likely won't have influence in my life in the future. Now, again, if I see them in person, I'll be polite, I'll be friendly, I'll be nice, um, because it's just a short interaction. But I don't have to subject myself to that on my Facebook feed. Now, some people say, Oh, just scroll on by. Sure. Um, you can you can definitely scroll on by if you want. Um, I just recognize that I'm not gonna scroll on by because words matter to me, and when people say things that are offensive to me or that are pointedly um targeting me, my beliefs, my family, um, I I don't want to interact with that because it creates this negativity, it creates this kind of defend, I'm gonna defend myself, I'm gonna fight, I wanna fight back, but I know that's pointless because I would challenge you to find a time when um you've posted something on Facebook that someone says, Oh, you know what, you know what, David, you're right. I I shouldn't think this way anymore. I I completely agree with you now. I I would if there's a study out there that says people change their minds because of what their aunt Judy posts on Facebook, um, please point me to it because I don't believe that people change their minds based on what your aunt or uncle or grandpa or grandma or mom or dad or sibling post on Facebook about the latest conspiracy or um how uh the COVID shots metal into your body and is gonna make you magnetic. Like posts like that make me crazy. I I can tolerate posts like that, but when those posts are directed towards me or beliefs I have and they're critic being critical sh in me trying to um point out that I'm less than, I've got that. And so what I I unfriend. Now, some people can say, well, I'll just unfollow. Sure, I I can unfollow, but again, I just it's unfollow kind of is a uh I don't I don't want to be like abruptly rude, but it's kind of an easy way out, right? The unfriending is shows a bit fortitude. Now, you can choose to do whatever you want. I choose to unfriend because there's no purpose in keeping them in my in my friend list. If I'm never gonna see them, if they're insulting me, um and if they have no interest in reasonable conversation, why am I why are why are we friends on Facebook? Um again, let me be clear. I'm gonna be polite and and nice to them in public if I ever see them. Um and so some of you may be thinking, oh, what about mother and father-in-law? There there becomes a challenge. Uh I will be honest. Um a lot of you don't get along with your in-laws, and so you're gonna have to just make that judgment call. Because if unfriending an in-law is gonna cause more problems than just staying friends with them, then I guess I would suggest stay friends and maybe just unfollow. Um, because people people put a lot of stock into this unfriending, and this is another reason why I think social media is horrible. Remember, like Facebook was started in 2008. So in 2007, before Facebook showed up, if you didn't agree with somebody on something, you didn't know actually you didn't know what they thought about something, um, because these were just topics that never got discussed. And if they did talk to you and were offensive to you and whatever, you just wouldn't interact with them anymore. But for some reason on social media, we feel this compulsion to have to interact with these people that have that treat us poorly. And um my encouragement for you in 2022 is to uh stop tolerating that bad behavior and unfriend some people. And if you can't bring yourself to unfriend some people, then unfollow some people because I think your life will be better for it, you'll feel better, and they just won't be in your timeline bringing negative vibes to you anymore. Alright. That's what I that's the third first podcast of 2022. Wow, what a banger that was. Um it I gotta tell you, it's been great to interact. So, so I do this podcast, and you know, it's more of a passion project for me. I enjoy it, I just kind of enjoy talking and giving my opinion on things. And it is super satisfying to get uh clients that come in and see me and say, Oh, I listened to your podcast, and and I say, Oh, and you still decided to come see me. That's awesome, great. Um, I've had that happen. I've had people um that don't live near me, um, that live in another country contact me, say, hey, I listen to your podcast. It is so great. I I appreciate that. And so if if you've if you're listening to me and you've appreciated something I've said, please let me know. I'm I'm super interested. Or if you've heard something I've said and you're annoyed, I would love to have a conversation with you. I'm always about reasonable conversation. Um, but if you become unreasonable, I probably will block you. Um because it's just I I have no time for unreasonability. Um, but yeah, feel free to reach out. You can contact me on my Instagram, Dr. David Simonson. You can email me at Head Shrink Inc., or you can go to my YouTube page and make a comment as well. Um, but hey, I hope you have a great start to 2022, and um we will talk again soon.