I Deleted 400+ Contacts and Nobody Noticed
Most of them were strangers anyway
There’s a moment you probably haven’t had yet.. but I’d recommend it. Going through your contacts and seeing how many you could delete.. I went through my phone contacts recently. 600-something people. And I started deleting.
Friends from school I haven’t spoken to in a decade. People I met once at a party pre-covid. Colleagues from three jobs ago whose faces I genuinely can’t picture anymore. Most of them I’d never messaged. Ever. They were just there.. Taking up space.
I deleted over 400. Nobody texted to ask why. Nobody called. Nobody noticed. Why would they though, they’ve probably deleted me anyway..
Which tells you something, doesn’t it.
And it’s the same everywhere else. I had over a thousand followers on Instagram. When I post a story of my golf swing, maybe 800 people watch it. And there’s this little hit when you see that number.. proof that people are ‘interested’ in what I post, apparently.. if you can call it that anyway.. or maybe it’s just the feeling of being ‘seen’ by 800 people?
But do I actually want to share things with those 800 people? Would I tell them something real? Most of them are strangers, or people that I used to know (shout out Gotye). A few are exes. One is my friend’s mum who followed me in 2016 and I felt this kind of ego power trip over him because of it.. (sorry George..)
More is better, apparently. But when you actually look at who’s there.. most of them are just data. Names taking up space in your phone, faces taking up space in your feed.
The strange thing is how ‘normal’ this feels. How unremarkable it is to have hundreds of ‘connections’ you’d never actually connect with. To feel a small buzz when strangers watch your story, while the people who actually matter might not even see it.
I’m not sure what the right number is. But I know it’s not 1,391.