How Can I Have A Facebook Account Without Any Friends
So I stuck with this approach for many months, and it felt great. However, I became restless. More significantly, I began to lose out on opportunities to interact with individuals I cared about. As a result, it was a beneficial break, and I'm now lot more cautious about how I say “yes” to people. I have lists of people: close friends, friends, acquaintances, work OK, work NOT OK, and so on.
As a result, your mileage may vary… Also, whomever stated that consistency was essential wasn't always correct.
I've made some significant adjustments to my Facebook use.
These modifications have drastically altered the use and appeal of my feed.
For me, Facebook has become a productive tool. Rather than the sinkhole, clickhole time-suck it had become, it's a location where time spent will yield good results.
I've been there for approximately eight and a half years. It was groundbreaking for the first several years.
That's what I'm saying. I was able to reconnect with old acquaintances for the first time in a decade. I reconnected with former classmates, coworkers, and long-forgotten loves.
The majority of the encounters were favorable. I recalled birthdays and renewed old connections. I got to see my friends' children grow up in real time.
So far, everything has been nice and fluffy.
It proved helpful for establishing new connections in the second stage.
Once in a while, you meet up with someone. You sneak around and conduct some background checks (or stalking). Then you use Facebook as a quick and easy method to expand a friendship.
Sure, I was there for a long time, but it was time well spent. Isn't it true that you have to invest in your relationships?
But, at some point, things began to change for me.
At the best of times, I have very little self-control. It's never been a strong suit of ours.
When you add in the allure of clickbait headlines and “active follower interaction,” it's a recipe for disaster. It did for me, at least. I was squandering far too many minutes and hours on meaningless clicking, scrolling, and asshattery.
I made it a point to accept almost all buddy requests.
(Chris Ducker informed me that if he had more than 10 connections with the requester, he would approve most requests.) It seemed to be a sound approach. It was adopted by me.)
As a result, my feed quickly got clogged with strangers.
So… I began unfollowing (rather than unfriending) an increasing number of individuals.
Not because they weren't happy – or sad – or humorous – or thought-provoking in their posts. But only because they didn't matter to me.
My breaking point was the day before yesterday. I received seven birthday notices for individuals I had never heard of. I wouldn't know where they lived or what they did for a job if you asked me.
When time begins to run out – particularly when you have kids – you make radical changes, and I made one that has significantly enhanced the quality of my (limited) Facebook time in a short period of time.
Here's how I went about it:
Facebook's No-Friends Strategy
The Facebook Strategy for No Friends is exactly what it sounds like.
I deleted all of my friends (including my wife) and restricted my interactions to small groups only.
I made a new Facebook profile, turned my old one to a public page, and then combined the two pages together.
As a result, I now have one (bigger) public Facebook page and one new Facebook profile with no friends.
My feed is now mostly comprised of business-related and entertaining exchanges between my clients and coworkers. Spam and (not-so-interesting) links are currently at an all-time low.
Here are the precise procedures I followed, which you may want to follow if you, like me, wish to maintain a Facebook page for engagement and advertising.
- Make a second Facebook profile.
You'll have to log out of your account and then log back in with a different email address. This is an ideal moment to establish a “facebook@yourdomain” email if you utilize wildcard catch-all email address routing, as I use.
- Make your initial account the only buddy you have.
Because you'll need to transfer ownership and administrative privileges to your new account if you moderate groups or own pages, you'll only need to do this if you moderate groups or own pages.
- Return to your old account and add your new profile as a group member/moderator to the groups you manage, as well as giving your new profile administrative access to any pages you own.
This is critical because if you miss this step and are the sole moderator of a group or page, those pages will be outside of your control, languishing unmoderated and unloved.
- Make a list of all the groups to which you belong and wish to stay a member.
Once you've deleted your old profile, your new profile will request access to these groups.
- Download a copy of all your data while remaining signed in to your original account.
It took Facebook approximately 15 minutes to send the file containing eight and a half years' worth of pictures, messages, and friends, among other things.
The file was 80 megabytes in size and was a compressed html file. It had everything: all of my wall conversations, all of my unread messages, every picture I'd posted, and more…
A list of your friends will be sent to you. However, you will not get any of their contact information. So, if that information is crucial to you, be sure you've recorded it before proceeding.
- Create a page out of your profile.
This was a simple task. To make my profile into a page, I followed these procedures.
My old profile was gone, and I was given a new page. Unwittingly, my old friends and followers became lovers of my new business page.
- Merge your existing pages (if appropriate).
I had two pages now. Although the first one – which had been maintained for a few years – had numerous updates, pictures, and other items on it, they were almost identical.
It also had less likes than my new page (my profile had more friends than my page had likes), and Facebook only let me retain the page with the most fans when I was combining the two pages. That was the newest page in this instance. Except for the fans, I lost everything on the preceding page.
It was simple to combine them. To merge pages, make sure your new Facebook PROFILE has administrator privileges to the page, then click to Page settings and choose “Merge Pages.”
Then just follow the instructions. More information may be found here.
You've regained control of your time.
When you log in with your new account, all you'll see in your feed are group updates from locations where you want to be.
This non-discriminatory attitude has also made it simpler for me to explain why I'm not accepting their friend requests.
I've received many in the last few hours (probably from the “People You May Know” notifications), so I went ahead and built a TextExpander snippet to send them a message:
I received your friend request. However, I've implemented a new personal Facebook policy: no friends at all. No one, not even my wife. There are no friends. None. I'll be active in groups and on my Facebook page (http://facebook.com/matthewkimberley), but if you have any questions, please email or contact me at [email protected]. I wish you all the best!
Several individuals have already responded with some variation of “respect.”
Some people will think I'm a total jerk.
Final Thoughts
Regardless, it seems like a tremendous burden has been removed.And, sure, if you have the time or desire, you can unfriend–or unfollow–everyone personally. This method, on the other hand, appealed to me because of its clarity and finality.
Your results may vary. Although I attempted to be as detailed as possible, my instructions may be missing an essential step.I'm not excellent at self-control, so I'm doing myself a favor by creating situations where don't have to use it.
