Today is the start of Advent, it is the tradition of giving something up in advance of the festivities of Christmas. Although it is supposed to be the nearest Sunday to St. Andrews Day (Scotland FTW) I like to think it starts when the kids start opening the advent calendars which is the 1st of December.
Quasi Christian/pagan festivities aside (lets not go there right now) I thought it would be a good idea to give up social media for advent, well not entirely, but enough that it would be meaningful.
I have decided to defollow everyone on my Twitter account, it being my most used social media entity.
Will it hurt? Probably, but there are so many other outlets where I can get the skinny on what the people I follow are up to and of course I have quite a number of Twitter lists to keep me busy.
Am I afraid of people will no longer follow me because I no longer follow them? I hope not, but if they do were they worth following in the first place? And as this is a temporary experiment I can always follow back people again.
There is the issue of being able to message the people I follow back, but these days there are many paths to the door.
However, I thought it a waste to have a zero denoting the people I follow and quite powerful to have only one.
There are also people I have been following for over 7 years, I pretty much started using Twitter at the beginning. But Twitter is a tool, it is not the actual person who even the relationship, it is a conduit to connecting and communicating with people and pressing the reset button once in a while is a good thing, lets hope anyway.
So I have decided for advent to only follow one Twitter account, my favourite charity The National Autistic Society.
I shall now go and press the delete button, but first will get a cup of tea.
Will let you know letter if anything of note comes of this.
Update: I am now following Shelter Box, which is based in Cornwall and is an excellent charity. It also appeared with the Rock in San Andreas, so it has to be cool.