About On-line Forums and Groups

DD2, despite the rain, still met up with friends at a nearby state park for a night of camping. It did get brighter as the day progressed, but we'll take off within the hour of her getting home. DH decided not to go up to the lake last night after work as he was exhausted, and with the bad morning and early afternoon weather, the start of a head cold, I ended up staying home as well. The thought of not feeling my best and getting stuck in side with the other side of the family was reason enough.The farmers market was a washout with just a few stalls set up. We couldn't find any garage sales that still went forward either, so DD1 and I had coffee and a long chat. I slept miserably last night-my back is dreading the four hour drive. I'm going to need to stop half way for a stretch break. 

I think I need to reconsider my following of a few online forums and social groups. I added one just recently about Empty Nesting. What I thought might be interesting stories of new hobbies found, ideas to help transition to down sizing and decluttering from a full house, and other useful tidbits seems to be a cry fest of helicopter parents now despondent that their now grown children are daring to have a life without them. I know I whine here all the time about trying to figure out how to spend  the extra time I used to spend on my kids activities. There some posts like that but they seem far and few. I'm talking about posts that go on for paragraphs about the parent, usually the mom, in complete despair that their child chose a school so far away they can't "just pop over to visit whenever they need a chat", or have set such ridiculous rules on their kids like, "require my child to text me a minimum of three times a day", and then have others back-up the overly corded moms. Please knock some virtual senses into me if I yammer to either extreme in this space. 

I've been following the Tightwad Gazette Facebook page, not directly affiliated to the books from the 90's, but started by a fan. I learned a lot back in the day reading the books, even though I never got over some of my own squeamish factor, over some of the money saving tips. As the writer had suggested, I took what worked for my own circumstances. For the most part, this on-line group has been full of good ideas. Every now and again though, someone posts things that they are proud of that all I can think is, "you are cheap-not frugal". "We recently went as guests to my husbands cousins cabin on the lake. We swam, had pontoon rides, roasted marshmallows by fire every night, and enjoyed fresh caught fish several times. All the vacation cost us was the gas to drive to there!" No mention of helping to pay for food, boat gas, or even a nice hostess gift. Oh wait, she did mention that she brought along packages of  marshmallows bought on clearance the previous fall, and "they were still quite soft and worked well on the fire." Now of course, there is a lot of context I could have missed and maybe their hosts absolutely didn't want them to bring a thing, but it was still cringe worthy.  Other times the Polly Prefect's pipe in on how great they have their food stores, and spend less than pennies a portion on every meal, and feed a family of eight with nothing but home grown fresh, self frozen or self canned fruit and vegetables, pasture raised beef, and totally from scratch, for $200 a month. Usually their BS is called out in the comments. I'll add both of these posters, or commenters (usually they are comment to the original post) are rare, so I'll stick with it for now. 

I have a few other Mom's groups, now rethinking if they will continue to be of any value. I follow a couple favorite writers and a writers group, and a couple thrifty, sustainable and minimalist living sites. All together I think there is about 8-9 groups that I have popping up in my feed. Now, I spend probably less than 30 minutes a day on FB, though for this post, it sounds like it must be much more. Generally if the first line of a post doesn't catch my attention, I scroll on past. More annoying though, each time you add a group, the algorithm changes and I get more an more targeted pop-up adds. I realize that is part of the FB business model, but boy is it kind of creepy, if not just clutter. Maybe one of my Empty Nest  acts needs to be purging my social media? 

What about you? Do you have groups you've joined on Facebook or other social media platforms? What was you interest in doing so and if you have "unfollowed" why did you do so? Let's talk in the comments.