Let me start by letting you know that my day job is that of a Visual Artist with an exhibition history going back to 1984. In pre-internet times it was a much more arduous effort to get the word out. My initial interest in Marketing and Advertising was rooted in the boosting of my art career. Like many artists, my world is split between two careers. Once social media began to make waves both my art career and the marketing job converged. Clients wanted in on the wave as did my friends, looking back it was inevitable.
I have a love/hate, but more on the hate, type of relationship with the behemoth Facebook which launched in 2004. Although my binary attraction to FB is not uncommon or healthy it is nevertheless the one I feel trapped in. Like many of us who were lured by their more social friends, I negotiated with myself on the merits of membership. “There will be no personal information shared and it doesn’t matter how many friends I have or don’t have” I reasoned. I will only share my artwork and keep it professional, I continued. With much apprehension and disdain for social media, I joined the cult of Facebook in November of 2007 a year after it was open to the public. This was my third effort to connect with other creative souls of whom I found plenty on the platform. My relationship with MySpace had fizzled out and it was time to do some serious networking with galleries, collectors, artists, curators, and writers. All the serious creatives were switching so the timing was right. It seemed like a perfect match between FB and me. Of course, this gluttonous monster that has acquired 82 companies including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus VR doesn’t leave much of an option to connect with your community. The FB predecessors are the bud of jokes like Friendster, Google plus, MySpace, and Vine. And the FB wannabees can’t gain much traction to make a dent in FB’s 2.7 billion users. If you don’t believe me, honestly, tell me you have heard of more than two on the list: WT Social, EyeEm, Yubo, MeWe, Sociall, Friendica, Ello, Vero, Mastodon, Steemit, Raftr, or Diaspora?
Right off the bat, I accepted everybody, mistake number one. Before I realized it whenever I logged on and my anxiety would skyrocket. I would find myself in dialogue with people who didn’t like each other and felt guilty for hosting them. Someone who I knew in RL would say something incredibly offensive for laughs and my more thin-skinned friends would lose their shit. And, I would feel responsible for it all. It all spun out of my control. It then occurred to me that I needed rules of engagement. By compartmentalizing, I gave myself a permission framework to depersonalize it. So I decided to share it with you.
Friend Request Rules
- I accept Artists, Galleries, Collectors, Curators, Writers
- No Musicians unless there is a connection to artworld
- No Poets unless there is a connection to the artworld
- No Politicians unless there is a connection to the artworld
- No bot accounts, parse profile with no photo or photo of model are a dead giveaway
- English or Spanish speakers as these are the languages I’m fluent in
- I have moratorium on family for ten years now
Un-Friending Rules
- You are an asshole online or RL
- Your political views have no room for me on my wall
- If you un-friend me there is no taksies backsies
- You are not interested in engaging with me, only posting your stuff on my wall
- If you send me more than three chainletters in a lifetime
- You troll me
Blocking Rules
- You are an asshole online or RL
- You have wronged me or my loved ones
- Stalker/Troll behavior
- Spammers