Coinciding with Mars’ entrance into “put-on-a-pretty-face” Libra in December, Facebook announced they now offer a more cut-to-the-chase “unfollow” button to replace their “hide all” function. A textbook passive-aggressive, Mars-in-Libra way of dealing with relational conflict on the social networking site, rather than directly “unfriend” someone because their posts continually annoy you, one can use this feature to simply mute their posts on your feed.  This way on the surface it still *looks like* all is fine and dandy – even though it really isn’t.  This is a classic Mars-in-Libra theme if I ever did see it, including their re-packaging of the “hide all” feature to more directly state its intended purpose for dealing with others.

I have to say I’m not very fond of the basic premise of this kind of thing on principle for a number of reasons.  For one, I think it’s easier to practice this sort of “benign” form of navigating relational conflicts than it is to proactively engage in the nitty-gritty work of negotiating potential hotspots a bit more openly.  My feeling is that hitting the mute button can actually …Read more…