Saskatoon writer James Avramenko didnât want to be one of those people who âdramaticallyâ declare theyâre leaving Facebook.
To be sure, he is going to unfriend each of his nearly 600 Facebook friends, but not without personally telling each of them why.
Avramenko is phoning long-lost friends, old bosses, a groomsman, childhood pals and even an ex-bully to give them a heads up as to why theyâre being âFacebook dumped,â he told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview.
These conversations can become âunderstandably awkwardâ but, with their permission, heâs been recording them and turning them into a podcast called â.â
âWhen you initially tell people youâre going to unfriend them, they can take it personally,â he said. âItâs taken as an insult like âwhy donât you like me?â But as soon as I tell them what Iâm doing, those feelings melt away.â
It was about âwanting to get off Facebook in some capacity but also not wanting to lose touch with the people.â
He said he wanted to be more âmindful about the relationships Iâm cultivatingâ because âIâm not seeing or speaking to the people I want to be ⌠and I want to get back to talking to people.â
Avramenko admits he was partially inspired by some of his friends âdramaticallyâ declaring they were leaving Facebook and laughs that âitâs not that I didnât respect it but I always found it bizarrely confrontational.â
So he felt the personal touch was the way to go instead.
HOST: SCROLLING THROUGH FACEBOOK 'FORM OF VOYEURISM'
Despite Facebookâs initial promise when it was founded in 2004 of connecting family and long-lost friends, Avramenko believes the site has now become a source of both anxiety and âdisconnectedness.â
â(It) has made us think that weâre more connected than we truly are -- it makes us think weâre interacting in a way that doesnât actually exist,â he said, adding that if we think about it, our behaviours online are âkind of bizarre.â
âWe mindlessly scroll through and look at peopleâs photos and think that we have somehow been in contact with them and we havenât,â he said. âItâs sort of a form of voyeurism.â
But he didnât always see Facebook as a superficial collection of connections devoid of âmeaningful interactions.â
Avramenko lost touch with people as he and his wife moved from Calgary to Victoria to Vancouver to Saskatoon. And each time they did, heâs had to pick up his roots and replant them in completely new cities.
So early on, when he started his account in 2005, Facebook was a âblessing in maintaining these sort of pseudo-connections.â
But 14 years later, he realized he was spending more time scrolling through his newsfeed than actually knowing whatâs going on with his âfriends.â
TURNING RECONNECTIONS INTO 'FRIENDLESS' PODCAST
To deal with his Facebook identity crisis, he began reaching out to old friends earlier this year and recording his conversations. In July, one of those people he reached out to was Juno-award-winning fiddler Ben Plotnick whoâd been his elementary school friend in Calgary.
They hadnât spoken in close to 20 years. So when Avramenko called him, he was âcaught up on the life that he lived and the adventures heâs had -- it was a really empowering thing.â
After awkwardly getting over the fact they hadnât spoken for decades, they also laughed together, apologized for growing apart and bonded over conversation about their careers and reminiscenced of their school days.
âAfter all those years, we found things to relate to each other and thatâs actually something I found magical,â he said of the call that became the basis for one of the first 30 episodes of his aptly-named podcast, âFriendless.â
âWe were friends for ten years on Facebook and the first time I messaged was asking him to be on the podcast. We werenât being friends to each other, we were (being) statistics to each other,â Avramenko said.
Other episodes have featured him âunfriendingâ his groomsman Matt Coulson, an old travelling companion and an ex-bully. Each of them, in one way or another, end up pledging to make more of an effort to keep up with each other in real life.
Finding a reason to take up podcasting was fortunate for Avramenko, who boasts a trained background in theatre, because heâs always looked for a reason to start one.
And now he gets to do it connecting with people he misses.
He hopes that 10 years from now, Facebook wonât exist. Although, Avramenko laughs that it could be replaced with something else as âa lot of the people I unfriend end up adding me on Instagram.â