"Queuing up" things to talk about in social media/electronic age

February 21, 2019 1:42 PM

I've spent alot of last 15 years posting on Facebook or websites or blogs about great things or funny things that come to my head, or shooting off a text or IM to my wife. I'd love to "hold" those things so I can talk about them in person. If you've been this way and have changed to expressing more of what's going on in person, how did you do it? (not using social media is one option, but let's talk about others). How'd you remember these things? How'd you make yourself wait.

I've had problems having things to say to close friends, family (no issues with new, random people), and I think major reason is I don't have much to say about my own life that hasn't been really expressed through other ways. The thing is, my life is pretty great and there's definitely great things to talk about. I don't express myself verbally as well as I do in text, which is one part, but I'd like to improve on that.

posted by sandmanwv to Society & Culture (9 answers total)

You want Homework for Life.
posted by gauche at 1:53 PM on February 21, 2019 [3 favorites]

I quit social media and carried a journal with me so every time I had an idea that I would have posted on Facebook, I would write the "post" in my journal. You could do something similar, and then go through it at the end of the day to "share" as desired.

I also found that after I quit Facebook, when I would hear something I wanted to share, it made me want to reach out about it, so I would text or email whoever I thought would get the biggest kick out of it. That's had the effect of bringing my friendships closer because I actually connect directly with them instead of posting my hilarious quips.

Tldr: quit social media
posted by katypickle at 2:00 PM on February 21, 2019 [7 favorites]

I started my blog (back in 1998) as a way to save all of those articles I wrote for mailing lists (remember those), or cool things I'd read, or posts I made on other people's blogs. I wanted to be able to find and search these things and not just toss them off into the ephemeral aether. So, yeah, my blog is exactly my mechanism to do this.

Very few people that I know IRL actually read my blog, I generally only have the "wait, what have we talked about?" with people I know less well who suggest meeting up for drinks or whatever, and in those cases it's actually a good step forward.

I've often thought it'd be nice to have a slightly more private version of my blog, but I've never gotten around to building that.
posted by straw at 2:39 PM on February 21, 2019

Perhaps similar to straw's approach, as a method of remembering topics I find an appropriate and relevant thread to post such things to here on MeFi then refer to my profile's history to recall them.
posted by XMLicious at 2:49 PM on February 21, 2019

I only post political/ news and humor to fb, not personal details, so it's a source of conversation. That thing about the governor was interesting or The Dad jokes - you have to stop, they're so terrible. Do you read the local paper? I recommend it. More relevant than Twitter, and lots of stuff that people care about.
posted by theora55 at 3:05 PM on February 21, 2019

Post on FB as an "Only Me" privacy post.
posted by hworth at 5:09 PM on February 21, 2019 [3 favorites]

I quit Facebook a couple of years ago and I know exactly what you mean! If I come across something relevant to my husband or a friend, I add an item to my to-do list to talk to them about it.
posted by beyond_pink at 8:23 AM on February 22, 2019

Sometimes if I think of something while I'm in a hurry, I'll text/tweet at the person in question & say, "Placeholder for me to talk to you about x later." Usually one of us remembers later! (& x is usually something suitable for a discussion, not just a one-liner.)
posted by diffuse at 9:35 AM on February 22, 2019

I also like my WordPress blog for this. You can even mark posts as private if you want them to be visible only to you when you're logged in.
posted by nosila at 12:06 PM on February 22, 2019