The New Year brings about New Years Resolutions. These Resolutions, some well thought out, and others a bit more difficult to sustain, are an obvious outcome of a new period in our life cycle.
As time progresses and we leave the Winter months, many of us embark on 'Spring Cleaning'. Is this part of the casting off of what was gathered to sustain us in the Winter?
Maybe the proliferation of the Internet expands this list to provide us with yet another cycle as we enter the following Winter. Depending on where you live, does October bring with it a Social Networking cull? As the Winter looms in front of us, do we begin to realise, and thereby evaluate who we will be interacting with during those long dark months, if we don't have a clear out now?
I've both executed and have been a victim of a social-networking cull this week. One friend had a clear-out, albeit she repeatedly denies the occurrence of that cull when challenged. So did another friend, and he also denied its existence. Is it a case that the 'cull' takes place, but that its instigator is embarrassed by the outcome? Does this embarrassment or awkwardness bring with it feelings of a necessity to avoid admitting the act? Or having originally culled you, are they glad of your approach and thereby welcome you back into the fold? A sort of social networking test of kinship.
Mind you, neither of the two culls that I mention; caused the flap and flurry of frantic activity that was caused by the pre-cull announcement that was made by a third friend. Her statement of intent caused a massive response that ranged from 'what's wrong?', to pleas of retention, and best wishes for the future.
I know her to be a really nice person, and the activity generated by her announcement reflects just how much others in her social network think of her. The pre-cull announcement was my idea, a way of letting people down gently, and for those who do slip off the 'causeway', to somehow give them some comfort in the knowledge that others were culled too. Or were others culled? Is a pre-cull announcement a method for avoiding conflict, especially when there is only one intended recipient for the cull? Gosh, how people interact is mind bogglingly complex. But I've been restored to the friends that I thought that I had lost, and my own list is a more manageable 52 and family. So Happy Social Networking folks, and spare a thought for those who wake up one morning and find that they are no longer part of a network that they previously enjoyed belonging to.
