twitter

twitter

I personally know people who hang off of the number of likes that they get on social media.  It’s almost like they value their own self-worth based on the number of likes.  This isn’t me.  I don’t have that many followers on social media, so it’s not like I’m going to get a lot of “likes”.  In general, it’s not a good idea to value your self-worth based on what other people think of you.  That said, it’s very easy to let what other people think of you, get the best of you. This is something I do. However, I don’t connect it to social media.  Social media, though, is such a huge part of our society and our lives, so this makes complete sense.

But there is a way to turn off likes, retweets, friend counts and everything else that is making you feel bad about yourself.  This is a bit different than a social media cleanse in that you’re still putting stuff out there for people to see.  But you’re not allowing people to comment on those images.  So let’s say you disable the metrics on your social media accounts, now what? By doing this, you’re removing the temptation to base your happiness on the number of likes from your social media accounts. The problem with this theory?  It’s not that simple.  Or at least I don’t think it is.

Facebook Dislike

To make this happen, all you need are a couple of browser add-ons, which were developed by Ben Grosser.  Known as Facebook Demetricator and Twitter Demetricator, they will tweak the code served up by the two platforms to keep certain metrics out of sight.  These add-ons won’t affect how others perceive your social media accounts.  There is a way to control what you see on social media (by way of not following certain people or accounts).  What these add-ons do, is give you a way to control what you see in terms of your own likes or retweets.

facebook

Coming to Peace with Facebook

Head to the installation page in Chrome, Firefox, or Safari, and follow the instructions. The next time you load up Facebook in your browser, you’ll notice some changes: You can see if you have new messages, friend requests, and notifications, for example, but not how many.

twitter

Coming to Peace with Twitter

The Twitter counterpart is just as straightforward and can be installed from here for Chrome and Firefox. The same page includes instructions for getting the tool up and running on Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Opera with the help of Tampermonkey.  Once you’ve installed the add-on, it’s easy to see how the number of replies, retweets, and likes are hidden.

The question I have though is how this will actually work.  I think the tool itself is a great idea, but I’m concerned that people aren’t going to find the peace they’re actually looking for. The other thing is that there isn’t a tool to block these metrics on Instagram.  And I would think that Instagram would be a trigger for many people.  If you’ve tried either of these add-ons, let us know if it worked for you.  Also, let us know if you have tried something else that has worked in terms of making sure you’re not valuing yourself based on the number of Facebook likes you receive after posting all your vacation pics.

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