My dearest Tumblr audience… greetings, I have had two very rough weeks, in fact it’s been a rough few months, so sometimes personal and family matters have the power to completely worn you out, work can be even worse sometimes, and when everything comes together at the same time things manage to become even bigger in scale.

Last week one of my closest friends, who happens to be a huge Game of Thrones fan happily announced that he had “chopped off about 200 “contacts” in his FB friends list” it kind of sounded hilarious because he used a reference to that show, and then another close friend commented that since we were reading that we had been spared for the time being… fun thing how we can change our minds up regarding how we feel about some people in our lives. 

After much thought, recently I decided to do something that could have been unrecognizable of me even a few weeks ago: I decided it was time to break up with a friend, or someone who had been really close for a while, and who had the privilege to be called my friend but for several reasons, as for the details, this story is kind of really long, but it can be resumed by saying that this person abused that relationship many times in the past for small little, forgivable things, but most recently it happened with a clear intention on their part to fulfill their career and personal goals, and the tension it created, reached to the point where it was enough for a decision to be taken.

And as with any break up this has become a strange time for me, it makes me feel a little bit guilty even, and I suspect the reason for this break up being so hard on my part, is that this friendly relationship had become somewhat a problematic issue for me, personally and at work, because up to this point and as a personal rule: I had decided to try and get along with people who were friendly with me and whom I am or want to be friendly with, those who can we be friendly with (this is were the word frenger becomes incredibly useful) and with my best friends, those who I love to bits -my real soulmates- if you will, whom I would never imagine having any excuse to break up with.

But frankly sometimes, and much more lately, there had been bigger issues going on and sometimes you grow impatient with some people for a number of different reasons or let’s be honest, some people can develop the ability to ruin friendships and thus it is about time to make a clean cut, “chop off” as my friend called it, I will describe it by it’s right name: “it’s not you it’s me, you jerk!”. 

This break up has been made worst because of online relationships communications, namely Facebook. We all remember the “break up” scene from the Social Network, it was hilarious in that context, and so familiar, we had all been there, seen that ourselves or someone close to us suddenly changed a romantic status and there it was public for all the world (and mostly your close contacts) to see, in fact, it is when yourself or your friends announce a romantic break up, it’s normal or even expected, because society has a way to program our social expectations to a point in which if we start a relationship of romantic nature, it could end up with a break up, but how do you break up with friends? is that even acceptable?, and mostly in the Facebook era: I found a simple guilt free solution in Facebook itself: You add them to a new feature called the “Restricted” group and also an old feature the “Chat Options” were you select those who can contact you in their live chat or not.

Thus, in appearance, friendships remain, but this is not as rude as “Ufriending” someone: how complicated things have become through the years: I remember when Netiquette almost only included rules for the use of Capitals as to not appear to be yelling online!, yet, with this feature what you choose to share as public is limited, because despite it all, I do not wish to become this person’s enemy or be the cause of the “mighty rage” of being “Unfriended”, but there have to be middle stages which should help once relationships get complicated, like it is in real life: I try to avoid the places they’re going to be and try to avoid their physical presence, if they want to get in touch with me there are SMS and maybe cellphone calls, those which I chose to take, technology can make us be closer today but only as much as we wish to be. 

But this is not the first person who joined the Restricted bunch, that’s also the new place where you’ll find the flirty jerk, whose story I told in my last post, and also in this list are a couple of people from my family who joined Facebook not long ago but whose sole presence in this network has caused me to use more privacy filters than with anyone else: there are things that I wish to share that I don’t want my family to know about, but surprisingly, I have found myself applying more filters to my family members than to most of my friends, filters that block their ability to know who is in my contacts list, because, after the horrendous break up of a cousin and one of my best friends, years ago, I learned a lesson and learned to become a believer in the separation of friends and family just as I believe in the strict separation of Church and State. The silly thing is: no this is not about embarrassing pictures or silly youtube videos or bad jokes or stupid posts people tag you in, but mostly about and please get ready for this: it is about political and religious views and following closely: music and films.

I have grown to hate Facebook because of how divisive these issues are. These issues can be divisive in real life, but they become out of hand online, if you might, another place to find how these turn people into idiots are Comments in Youtube, it doesn’t matter what it is: music by a great Danish or Australian band, a fantastic Mashup made by a kid genius from France, people getting ready for the Carnival in Rio, Pictures of cute hedgehogs with anime music in the back, a guy scuba diving in the Maldives, the latest rant about the new hip Fluorescent colours by an offended teen fashionista, or Make-up Artists putting on tips to do great smokey eye, you name it: online networks become a horrible mirror of how bad people get while arguing and how stupid arguing is. And lets be honest the word “Hater” has been wrongfully attributed to Hipsters, whom I have absolutely no problem with, the thing if we pay attention we will find Haters are all around us, there are no middle stages about being opinionated about issues, either you hate or you don’t. But I have had it with it, I am so careful with what I post on Facebook because: I am afraid of haters, and trust me I have couple hipster friends or maybe I might be a little hipster myself, and like that matters, those who have treated me worst are those who have nothing to do with being hipsters. 

And don’t get me started with Twitter… but since only the people who follow me are people I trust (ok, 99% ) and it’s not so widespread and I mostly use it to follow people I care about like musicians, designers and some pretty cool people some who are my friends, from work or school and some whom I have met online, it’s ok but the 140 characters get to my nerves sometimes.

This leads me to Tumblr, my one true place to find solace online, a place where I can be myself and also share stuff I don’t want others to hate me about, or have issues with my friends or family, that’s why I hardly ever use tags, so what if my audiences are restricted to the few people who have managed to become my followers, their decision to follow me is theirs and so far it’s where I have felt the best sharing my feelings my “status” and such things…

 That’s what I wanted to talk about, until next time, dear Tumblr audience, and thank you for listening!!!