As anyone who knows me personally knows, I am pretty petty. However, I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing, because it saves me from being fake and pretending to like things I hate. This is especially true when it comes to my practices on social media. I enjoy social media because there are people I like to keep up with and see what’s going on in their lives, but on the other hand, it can be a huge time drain and stir up a lot of unnecessary negative feelings.

I have always been pretty selective with my Facebook friends list--criteria include I have to know you personally, but with the pressure to create an “image” and have a following on social media, I’ve ended up with many people in my feeds that I don’t know well or even like that much. So, I’ve been doing a bit of social media spring cleaning and following that notion of “get rid of anything that doesn’t bring you joy anymore.”

I also decided to keep a running list of reasons why I’ve unfriended/unfollowed/blocked people, in an effort to inspire you to also embark on your own social media purges and only keep the people and accounts that actually matter to you around.

Twitter has this great newish feature that allows you to mute words/accounts from ever appearing on your timeline, even if they’re tweeted/retweeted by someone you follow.

Here are some of the accounts I’ve muted, plus some of the reasons why:

Anything from/about the Kardashian-Jenners. #sorrynotsorry

Donald Trump. If it’s important enough, somebody will tweet a screenshot of it.

Rob Lowe (Chris Traeger on ‘Parks and Recreation’) because he tweeted “Lindsey Buckingham is Fleetwood Mac.”

Brooklyn 99.

The Walmart yodeling kid.

“Gorls.” I didn’t really love "Despicable Me" and I don’t get that meme.

Kanye West.

Here are some things/people I’ve blocked/unfriended/unfollowed on Facebook:

Religious pages.

People who I was friends with because we went to high school together but haven’t actually spoken to in years.

People I don’t know who post excessively in groups I’m in.

People who are unnecessarily rude in the comments section.

People that I was friends with out of obligation but really don’t like.

Was it petty of me to write an Odyssey article about this? Probably. But was it really petty of me to rid my feeds of any of these things? NO!

The very fact that we worry about unfriending or following someone is problematic. Social media should be a fun tool to keep you in touch with friends and family, people you actually care about.

So try this: the next time something comes across your feed that makes you go “ugh,” unfriend that person, and watch the important things from people that matter to you start to become more visible in your feed.

I promise you: it’s liberating and it’s good for you!

Stop obsessing over what your virtual “friends” think and curate your social media experience to be something positive for you, instead of a time drain, a chore, or another negative aspect of your life.