This article comes from WeChat public account: Biyeahboy (ID: biyeahboy), author @ 林比利. The picture comes from the worm idea.

On January 9, Zhang Xiaolong, the father of WeChat, posted a public lesson via video. Among them, he said a lot about the impact of WeChat on people and future changes, but I was most impressed by this sentence he said:

In the past, we limited one person to a maximum of 5,000 friends, and now there are nearly one million people close to 5,000 friends.

After reading this number, I opened my WeChat address book silently and counted the number of my friends. I bowed my head in shame.

Less than a thousand, 726.

This number is deliberately kept by me, in other words, caused by deleting friends from time to time. The reason why I do n’t want too many friends is that I remember Zuckerberg once said:

Facebook is a tool to promote people-to-people connections, and so should WeChat.

Wechat has many friends, which does not mean you have time to contact them. What are those extra zombie friends keeping? How many of them are true “friends”?

Mr. Cao Xueqin once said:

Every gold is easy to obtain, and one who is conscientious is hard to find.

Deeply agree.

1

Removing friends is a complex and sensitive issue.

Why? On the surface, deleting your friends is a personal act, and your own address book is responsible for it, but if you put it in a circle of friends, it becomes a social act.

Yes, the circle of friends is a social occasion.

This was not the case when WeChat first started. I remember when WeChat just appeared in 2012, many people moved from the main square of Weibo to WeChat, and suddenly entered the network of contacts between acquaintances: elementary school students who had been separated for many years were contacted; colleagues who had resigned ten years ago were friends Now, the little friends who grew up together in my hometown also know each other’s status.

WeChat seems to shorten the distance between people. In particular, the appearance of the circle of friends allows everyone to post their status from time to time, instead of chatting with people peer-to-peer, which avoids the embarrassment of no topic, andCan enhance mutual understanding with friends.

So, the so-called self-media should first refer to the circle of friends.

Remember that in the early days of MSN, everyone only displayed when they logged in. You can only communicate with each other by initiating a conversation. I remember watching a netizen wrote back then:

Open MSN, facing the long contact list, but don’t know who to chat with.

The loneliness in social networks is evident.

In this sense, the emergence of WeChat is revolutionary. You do n’t need to log in to be online anymore. You are always online in the other person ’s friend list.

Slowly, WeChat has more and more friends, spreading from acquaintances to non-acquaintances, until it becomes a channel for strangers to establish a connection. When they meet for the first time, they do n’t know each other, but adding WeChat to each other means that the relationship is solidified. Become a “network” of each other.

These connections are still strangers in nature. Most people just say hello and then lie quietly in your address book, but when you send a circle of friends, he will see Now, the circle of friends you send is to socialize with him.

Therefore, you must pay attention to words and deeds in social situations. Even if you delete a friend, it is absolutely politically incorrect to say it:

The deleted heart is full of anger, and those who are not deleted also think you are arrogant.

In fact, just eight words: just delete it if you want to delete it, just don’t say it.

2

The other day, I blocked some people in my circle of friends, and set them to not see their circle of friends. The common characteristics of these “friends” are:

Post only the content of your own account, nothing else.

Everyone knows that with the prosperity of new media entrepreneurship-or flooding, everyone has a public account that is closely related to it. Whether it is personal, company, or friend, there is always a need for you to forward Public number.

In the new media era, a person’s emotional intelligence is tested.

You need to make sure that your circle of friends is not blocked, and you need to be a smart endorser of your own name, so you have to do it, not just your own content.

As for other content, what do you choose to repost, this is what you have to consider for your people. Because basically, even if you say nothing when reposting an article, it means that you agree with the article.

It is your post that creates your profile.

For example, whether you believe in Chinese medicine, pay attention to the conflict between the United States and Iran, the suicide of Peking University girls, the fire in Australia, common sense of health, and so on, you must think about the results after you forward.

A person’s preference is the one that best reflects whether the music you forward is the new pants or the legend of the Phoenix. The show you like to watch is “Chernobyl” or “It’s All Good”, and whether it is in favor of Luo Zhenyu or Lukewen, both affect It’s judged by others.

The circle of friends is also a place where some private information is transferred. You can selectively show your private life, personal interests, and whereabouts.

After you have partially displayed, in exchange for the other party’s empty, what other than waiting for the friend circle to forward his public number?

3

Interactions in the circle of friends are knowledge.

Friend A told me such an example. One day, he met friend B during a dinner, and the two added friends to each other. So the two sides opened in a circle of friendsBegan socializing.

First, B reposted an article in his circle of friends, and A liked him. A few days later, A reposted another article, but B did not respond.

As a result, A immediately blocked B.

The reason is simple. Like each other. It is a basic social etiquette. It is also a necessary step to transform from a stranger to a friend.

Of course, even if you can like each other, it can’t explain how reliable the relationship between the two people is. What can best test the content of the WeChat friend relationship is the opinion on a controversial event.

A few days ago, Southern Weekly published a report on the suicide of Peking University girls, “The Shivering Love: Chat Records of Peking University Suicide Girls”, followed by Sanlian Life Weekly on WeChat public account It’s article.

Two articles published on the same day by Southern Weekend (top) and Sanlian Life Weekly (bottom)

Many people have expressed their views clearly in the banner of the circle of friends, some support the Southern Zhou Dynasty, some support the tripartite. At this time, the values ​​of two strange friends were tested.

If the two people agree, they will deepen their identity, and it is more likely to strengthen a very fragile relationship. If they do not agree, they will likely block each other immediately.

There is a high probability that you wo n’t like each other.

4

I remember reading a news last year that a course on “Social Media Operations” at a university in Henan turned out to have a very strange request.

Teachers in this course require students to add WeChat friendsIn normal performance, more than 1,000 friends are required to pass. Many students groan and add friends to add to their tiredness. Other students said it was a nightmare for socially feared people. A netizen teased:

The school closed the door for you, but opened the window for the micro-businessmen.

Compared to office workers, students have a much smaller social group. Even if these students can add up to 1,000 people, it is hard to make up. These friends are even more meaningless, and it is difficult to test students for Social Media Operations. Understanding.

Some people have done statistics. When you have just stepped into society, the social population will increase by 20%. But even a 20% increase doesn’t mean how much of a relationship you will have with these people.

There is a famous “150 law” in social relationships, also known as “Dunbar number”, a theory proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar.

Wolfram Mathworld: Rule 150

The core of this theory is that the size of the human brain’s neocortex allows humans to have a stable social network is 148. After rounding, it is about 150. Although human beings have an infinite nature of social love, everyone’s ability to maintain the stability and efficiency of their social networks is limited.

That is to say, no matter how you want to socialize, you make yourself happy, or the number of meaningful social contacts is only 150, which is too far from the WeChat friends limit of 5,000.

It can be said that most of the 5,000 people will not only not be able to contact you, they will also be less likely to be your friends. The circle of friends they send is very likely to become spam.

So back to the question at the beginning of the article, what do you want so many friends for?

5

Yesterday, after I reposted the message “One million people are already close to 5,000 friends” in the circle of friends, many friends left their number of friends.

Some 1200, some 1600, some 1800, all three are media professionals. It stands to reason that they are faster at meeting strangers than ordinary people. The reason why they do not have as many people as they think is the result of active selection, that is, delete friends when nothing is wrong.

The essence of deleting a friend is actually the active choice of the information you have obtained. To put it bluntly, you are very alert to what kind of information your friend will send, will he have more interaction with you, and is he likely to become you True friend.

These people are usually also very concerned about what kind of public name they need, what kind of information they need to get, and the final result they want.

This is a manifestation of a certain media literacy.

Since there is active information, there is certainly passive information. We are all living in the bombardment of these two types of information. If we are slightly lost in our daily lives, we may fall into the ocean of passive information.

In an information-rich society, relying too much on passive information can make people feel confused, anxious, and uncomfortable.

In general, reading circles of friends or WeChat articles is light reading. It is reading based on information, not reading that causes you to think.

You can brush the circle of friends, but you ca n’t brush all the time. Of course, there is pleasure in brushing the circle of friends, but the pleasure will slowly disappear until it becomes a kind of irritability and loss.

In contrast, deep reading will provide another kind of pleasure, which is a different level of pleasure that makes you more comfortable physically and mentally. A netizen who is always alert to electronic devices and has deep reading habits said:

In the process of reading, you will gradually enter a “deep reading” state: this is a pure joy and endless pleasure, this is a close and intimate blend of people and words and knowledge, no reading habits Or “hobby” people have a hard time understanding this state of ecstasy.

Digital Trends once published an article Technology makes our lives easier, but is it at the cost of our humanity ?, meaning that when technology makes our lives easier, it affectsRing our humanity.

The tide of technology can’t be resisted and irreversible, but we need to be reasonably vigilant about electronic devices, take active control of social media, and ensure our social quality.

Everyone has a virtual world and a real world. But you are not just living in the virtual world. Now that we are bombarded with comprehensive information, we need to spend more energy in the real world.

Social networks have contacted us, but not necessarily communicated with us; it has brought us closer, but has not necessarily increased our intimacy; it has inspired our social nature, but may have smoothed our ability to communicate. Social well-being comes from the quality, not the quantity, of the social, and the depth, not the frequency, of communication.

Robin Dunbar said well:

When we cry, we need a shoulder, not a message.