The straw that broke the camel's back, or broke my relationship with Facebook, was a podcast on ghosting. I am pretty sure everyone knows what it is by now, but in essence it is the idea that you don’t want to deal with issues so you just ignore them, and by them, I mean people. I didn’t like the idea that I was cross posting to Facebook, as if I were there, but never replying to any posts. I was Ghosting.

That was more than 4 years ago now, and I don’t regret it for a second. However, I see the same social media ghosting going on all over the place. In an effort to cross posting everything everywhere there are massive holes developing and some times it’s sad to see them. I am guilty of this currently, I haven’t quite figured out what I am going to use and what I am not, so Twitter cross posting can come across a bit rude. I can only apologise.

There’s a certain level of expectations from comments on social media. Sure they don’t all deserve replies, but I might be in the minority here, but it feels weird to leave the service completely. Sure, you’re not responsible for where your content gets posted, but cross posting appears just like a normal post. So, I’m a bit uncomfortable with it. On services such as micro.blog this is really obvious. It is littered with users that have signed up at some point, added their RSS feed and have not checked in for a long time.

Posts are receiving replies, asking questions and giving feedback to no avail. Many users seem under the impression these posts are by active users, which is a real shame. Twitter, Facebook and Mastodon are littered with these ghost posts. Does it matter, no, is it something I think about, of course. It’s great to be able to share your work everywhere and get more people to view it, but I like to monitor it at least a bit just so I don’t seem rude