Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they were confused. They said the posted it on social media. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely. I have a few close friends and that’s it.
Maybe that’s an ok tradeoff to make, but it’s worth knowing that before getting into it.
Dont have FB, twitter, reddit, linkedin, tiktok, not even google account... none of that crap. I am successfully avoiding getting my name anywhere on the internet, I am not posting my photos, videos,...
I have 7 friends I meet regularly, I have friends where our life separated years back and we meet once or twice per year and I have phone with 473 phone numbers of various contacts, from former colleges to dishwasher repair technician, etc.
And guess what, people call me, sms me (oh yes, it works so much better than having 20 various clients installed for different groups of people) or send me email if something important has happened and I am actually physically invited to birthdays, "i got son" celebrations, notified about death (luckily only one, former schoolmate).
When we meet, in person (i hate long phone calls), we have a quality chat as I dont know anything about their ingrown hair on the tip of their toe and they don't know anything about me changing job or having knot on hair in my beard.
For anyone else, I dont care. I dont disillusion myself how I have 473 good friends on some stupid online platform who need to share every intimate detail with me. I cant even handle so many people.
So maybe those tradeoffs are not really the real tradeoffs but rather self deception, how much you matter to the people and to how many people.
I can count them using my fingers. Which is perfectly fine.