Hello,
I'm Mervi Eskelinen!
An artist, nerd and sorcerer, dedicated to make world softer and better for everyone, and to get you to make more art. Make art, change the world!
What happened when I didn't comment on Facebook for a week
Do you want to get your blood pressure high? Try reading some comments on Facebook. Especially on public posts of politicians and others alike. Or just the comments some of your Facebook friends write on your posts. Hmm. Maybe I need better friends.
Add to it writing your own comment and then someone replying something snarky to it. Oh yeah, it's a vein ready to pop in your head.
This is why I decided to make a little test. I like to test people on different social media platforms. If you are my follower, friend or otherwise involved with my social media presence you are likely to take part on my tests without knowing about it. Oh crap. Now you know.
This time I tested not writing comments on Facebook for a week. I must confess I made two comments: One where a person asked if their website was working (it wasn't) and one for someone's post about their cat passing away (my condolences as I know how tough it is). Those were really special cases and otherwise I didn't comment.
I did like posts, I did reshare them and I did like some comments too. Mostly though I kept myself out of the comments altogether and only liked and shared posts. It was rather a refreshing thing to do.
So what happened? Nothing much really. This didn't seem to stop folks from commenting and liking my posts as they weren't doing that so much before either. Of course this was a rather short time of testing and I don't know if the amount would reduce in time because of the lack of my response. May need to test that theory.
It doesn't appear anybody noticed my week of non commenting. At least they didn't voice it out anywhere. Was everyone too busy to do their own stuff not to notice I wasn't quite there? I don't know. It's another thing that would need a little more testing.
For those who are interested in things like Klout scores the week of not commenting on Fb didn't seem to have real affect on those. The score had been seesawing between 58 and 59 before too and it kept doing so through this week as well.
The only thing really happened was I wasn't afraid of checking what's up on Facebook. Yes I have been afraid to do so due to the instant bad feelings the comments tend to cause. I was also less afraid to share all sorts of stuff on my timeline without being concerned about other people's stupid reactions. It is a funny thing because at the same time they were capable of writing down their stupid reactions. The fact that I knew I would be now able (for the sake of the test) not to react to their reactions was making me much more cool about it.
Now if you are one of those who don't care you'll be likely to tell me I don't need to react and I should not give a fuck about their comments. In that case I urge you to do so on Facebook so I can ignore it. Why would you write a comment if you think the recipient of the comment shouldn't react on it? That's messed up, dude. It's like hitting someone in the face and expecting them to be cool about it.
Luckily lack of comments doesn't mean no-one cares. Therefore I can keep some of my no-comments policy up for my own health and for being able to keep signing in Facebook. In case I don't reply nor like your comment it means I did care, but I didn't like what you had to say.
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