Love friend in real life but not on social media

Pretty needy and pathetic of your friend.

Assuming you're a Facebook user? Change your privacy settings to approve tags and prevent friends from posting on your timeline. Hide updates from your friend. You can still click her page once in a while to give likes to her cringey dross.

Locker10a wrote: »

It’s one of the OPs best friends, they can’t just unfollow them without some type of hurt/upset/confrontation!! All of this can avoided easily! Snooze .,..

This is the second time you posted and you're just confusing matters by contradicting people who are giving correct advice.

Unfollowing is not the same as Unfriending.

A friend will not know if you unfollow them. You just won't see their posts until you follow them again.

Snooze is similar to unfollowing except it only lasts 1, 7, or 30 days. At the end of the period you will see your friend's posts again unless you snooze them again or unfollow them.

Some people's social media habits have never matured.

When Facebook started, it was novel, new and I would post up pics and things I thought friends would find interesting. Most people I know have stopped posting personal info and photos and have grown out of doing what your friend does.


My partner who is younger than me used to post up info and photos etc... I had to "educate" / explain that I didn't want photos of me posted on line, that I didn't want our kid's pics up either and that I didn't use Facebook for keeping in touch with my real friends - if I wanted them to know what I was up to, I'd call them or text them - like adults do. The best example was FB 'friends' wishing me a happy birthday based on the date I had entered on FB, not my real birthday.

She gets this now...

I think you might need to have a chat with your pal. It sounds as if she is bored and hasn't 'copped' that what she is doing is being perceived as cringe. She's using social media to fill a gap.


I would start with "I saw you tagged me in that FB post about that gig.... listen, I've decided to only use FB now for messenger / to keep in touch with old travel pals. I'm just bored with it. Would you mind not tagging me anymore as I don't want people knowing what I'm up to. I'm going to be changing my privacy settings too...……. "

It starts a conversation.

You could say "I notice you seem to be on Facebook a lot - are ya bored?"

The thing is, if she lacks the awareness of how 'immature' / cringe posting and tagging appear to others and lacks the awareness at how needy she is coming across, she may not understand what you're on about.

Ahshurlook wrote: »

So I hid her posts, I don't see them but she's not unfriended....however she text me to ask why I wasn't really liking her stuff anymore. I haven't answered yet. I can't exactly say your social media posts make me cringe, she is going through a hard time at the minute.
I really think social media is a hindrance to any close relationship!

Just say that you're trying to cut down on how much time you spend on your phone so you haven't been going on Facebook.

Get off social media yourself, you will see a whole new world. If shes a good enough pal to want to phone you or knock on your door, then she will.

I delete people like this from my life now, or at least mute them down as low as I can, tbh. They're absolute drains. The way they learned to relate to the world is through constantly setting fire to their personal life for attention (in this case, reality TV), so they've no interest in changing and helping themselves because the messed up way they see the world is that this is actually what makes them happy.

They'll turn on you as quick as anything too, don't be naive enough to think that they share your values and sense of loyalty. I worked with one girl like this and listened to her problems for years despite her having zero interest in doing anything to address the root of all these issues (i.e. herself). Eventually I got empathy fatigue and had to back off talking about personal stuff with her because it was affecting my own mental state, although I wasn't mean and still occasionally made time to make smalltalk. She picked up on this and began to push back. Eventually she ended up somehow trapping me in her web of drama and putting in a complaint over absolutely nothing! (The long and short of the 'complaint' was: "He refused to engage when I started an argument with him on the floor and I found that rude and dismissive") I even considered legal action against her before just deciding I'd wasted enough hours of my life thinking about this person, given her attention and energy through everything she'd gone through to the point it affected me, then when I decided to look out for myself she not only didn't accept it, but went on the attack and tried (unsuccessfully mind) to harm my professional life.

This is the kind of person you're dealing with ultimately. You're already seeing signs of it. You mute her and decide to stay in control of what negativity you allow into your life...and she immediately picks up on it and tries to force it on you. You can try be honest if you like and if that would make you feel better, but the only way she'll take it is that you 'turned on her', so she'll have to react in kind because it's an excuse for more drama. I'd say the best way to do it is to ghost her slowly. Normally I'd hate that behaviour but you have to play the hand you're dealt. That way she won't get to be triggered to start drama with you because it'll be more confusion, and she'll adjust and find someone new to leach onto. You're not going to change her. Her 'going through a tough time' is not your problem or responsibility. If she wasn't now, she'd just create something to achieve the same end anyway.

Ahshurlook wrote: »

Hi everyone,
I don't want to go off social media myself, I rarely post anything about my private life, my husband and kids are never posted but I use it for a particular hobby of mine and to keep in contact with friends from travelling.
.

That's what I use it for too. But that's the perfect thing to say to her...

That you don't use it to look at other's pages or what others are posting - you don't have time or the interest.

You can tell her also that you've unfollowed everyone (not unfriended) so that nothing turns up on your time line and that you don't see any of her posts now.

And the fact that you've done it to everyone means she can't take offence.

As for the reality TV show - be a friend and tell her to have a real hard think about her motivations for going on and the possible repercussions of it.