So this once per weekend post idea really worked out great

Oh well. I'll just write when I have time and feel like it.

I was talking with an aunt today, and she mentioned how much she loved Facebook - she's gotten to see so much of her family's lives (like pictures of our garden) that she probably never would have gotten to without it.

Now, I've been actively avoiding Facebook for the past few months, and my life has been better for it. Less time wasted browsing with my brain turned off, less stress at the increasingly ignorant opinions of increasingly distant friends and relatives, and so on - I'm thinking of just going ahead and deleting anyone who reposts memes from white power groups. I'm considering deleting or deactivating my account, but I have a few people I still interact with on there occasionally. Facebook is also becoming unimportant enough to me that I just don't care enough to actually hit the "delete" button like I did with LinkedIn, but LinkedIn was actively irritating me by spamming me with emails no matter how many times I told them to stop.

But anyway, my opinion of Facebook is at an all-time low right now, so hearing my aunt praise its ability to enrich her life left me a little stunned for a second.

But then she said, "I don't really post on there much. Nobody really needs to hear my opinions on Facebook."

My aunt is a very intelligent, creative woman, and I like hearing her opinions, so I was about to argue something like, "Of course your opinions matter!" But then I realized that she was absolutely right. So much of my relaxation from avoiding Facebook has been from the fact that I no longer need to post my every thought or argue with every ignorant post from a family friend from church I haven't talked to in person in 15+ years.

Nobody really needs to hear my opinions on every aspect of the nature of human existence, at least, not when its cluttering up their news feed when they're trying to find pictures of their grandchildren. Maybe it's the journalism degree, maybe it's the residual Christian beliefs about "witnessing" to poor, lost souls, but I inherently misunderstood the fact that I can express a researched opinion to mean that I have to express my beliefs at every available opportunity.