I started blogging a long time ago, stopped, started again, stopped again, occasionally posted, but never really enjoyed it after (drumroll, play scary music) THE TRIAL.  I wrote in other places, and only wrote personally when it suited me, which wasn’t very often. One of the things I always enjoyed about blogging was the interaction among people all over the world. I joined Twitter a few years ago, and found that it replaced some of what I missed about the blogging communities of years past.

Over the past few years, participation in social media has exploded, with people spending more time on Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, among many others. Therefore, I found myself spending more time using these services. Not long after joining Twitter, I noticed a lot of people talking about and joining a new service called ‘Friendfeed.’ Along with many others, I migrated over there and found a growing community. It was a great combination of a 90s-era chat room and interesting links, comments and discussions.

As a result, I stopped writing as much because my social media time creeped into the time I was allowing for personal projects. Bottom line: It was fun, interesting and engaging, especially for someone who spent a lot of time at home, like me. I work from home, I’m a single mother, and I live in a small town. In addition, I’m not an outgoing person and I’m pretty much a homebody. Therefore, it seemed to be a great way to not just read my RSS feeds, but discuss them as well.

Just like any other internet activity, drama soon followed. I won’t go into that here, because anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes interacting on the internet has experienced the big D. It’s everywhere – It’s not exclusive and doesn’t discriminate.

This past summer, when Facebook bought Friendfeed, many people rushed to declare that Friendfeed was dead. Just like a loyal lover or spouse, Friendfeed’s many fans spent countless hours defending it and insulting anyone who dared to say anything negative or agree to its upcoming demise.

People use social media for many different reasons, and personalize the tools in many different ways that work best for them. When people stop using a service, they analyze it differently. Some are for technical reasons, and some are social, or maybe it’s just to follow the herd over to another new and shiny service. Everyone’s reasons are different, and most people’s choices are personal.

I intentionally began spending less time on Friendfeed. I found that the drama and negativity there dragged me down and tended to affect me in a negative way, and I was unable to ignore it. I read many cries of “Hide and Block what you don’t like!” but the problem with using these features is that you’ve already seen or read the things that are giving off the bad juju. Hiding and blocking doesn’t erase it, so that just didn’t work for me. However, most of the time, I continued to enjoy using Friendfeed just as much or more than I hated the bad stuff, so I always found myself keeping up with posts and checking in, even if I wasn’t actively participating. I was also using it as an RSS aggregator, because it was easy and I could keep up with many things while I had it open. Meanwhile, there seemed to be this snowball effect going on, where the craziness grew into big clown monsters that eat you while you sleep and spit you out like the old guys in front of the barber shop chewing tobacco. (How’s that for QQ exaggeration?)

I admit, I’m an overly sensitive person. Even if I ignore people’s bad behavior (or even my own, when I would stupidly get involved), I tended to absorb the negative energy. So I spent way too much time lingering over the delete button, wanting to remove myself, but never quite getting to the point of walking away. Then, one day last week, it hit me:  If I spend so much time in my personal life getting rid of negative energy and staying away from people who bring negativity and criticism into my life, why am I inviting it into my life daily by logging into this service?

When people in the past deleted their Friendfeed accounts, many negative comments were made about how strongly someone disagreed with those decisions, and countless jokes were made at that person’s expense. Some people leave in haste or in anger, and once they calm down, realize that they made a rash decision, only to return after a few days or weeks. Each person makes the decision that’s best for them. None of them are wrong and truthfully, all of them are right – for each individual person. In my opinion, our differences are what makes social media fun and interesting. Therefore, shouldn’t we be embracing those differences instead of ridiculing them when we don’t agree with their choices?

My choice, and my decision, was to aggregate my feeds elsewhere, and continue using social media and those tools in the way that works best for me. Unfortunately (and sadly), that doesn’t include Friendfeed.

So long, Friendfeed, and thanks for all the fish.

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