Supporting Relationships

“Real-Life” Unhealthy Friendships and AnuChat (AnuChat Philosophy)

Imagine you’re in a social group with Benjamin and Karen. They both have AnuChat and you’re friends with Karen on the platform. Benjamin finds out and he makes a scene – how come you didn’t add him? Maybe you do add him, but you’re not really friends, you want to remove him from the list, but he’ll notice. And he’ll make a bigger scene, since now everyone remembers that you added him. Now what?

I’m sorry to say that we don’t have a solution for you. AnuChat is here to create, support, and nourish healthy relationships, but it can’t have the hard conversations for you. You can bite the bullet and have Benjamin in your friends list, or you can leave the whole group. But the very core of AnuChat is that you’re connected with the people you want to connect with. This is a hard problem, but it’s not going to get solved by hiding from it. You could hide your posts from Benjamin, or hide Benjamin from your own timeline, but they’re probably going to notice eventually, and it’s better to have it out in the open. At least, that’s my opinion.

Maintaining Relationships

One of Anuchat’s declared goals is to help people be intentional with their relationships, supporting them with friendships they want to keep alive, and actively verify that friendships are still in existence. People are encouraged to keep their real relationships on the platform, and remove superficial ones.

We don’t just want you to have healthy relationships, we want it for ourselves. That’s the driving force behind this idea. I want to know that my friends are on the platform, to bring them onboard, and to keep in touch. Anuchat’s design is meant to encourage that.

We want people in our “Friend List” to actually be our friends, people whom we actually want to see what they write about, and vice versa. People whom I would be excited if they saw my upcoming visit to Rome and said “Let’s meet up there!”

Anuchat should be a place where I don’t think twice before posting an idea, because it will look silly or because people would read into it the wrong way. It is a place to be among friends. We should feel comfortable. There shouldn’t be existential dread about making the wrong moves.

And if that’s not the case, then maybe those people who make us so concerned about our every move are not really friends? Maybe they’re a Benjamin.

Evolving Friend-Lists

~~Your friend list,~~ My friend list, should constantly update to reflect the people I actually want to keep in touch with – people I want to interact with. That list can go stale, and change over time, and Anuchat (unlike some other platforms, maybe) wants to help you make that happen.

Yeah, that means Anuchat encourages trimming our friend-list and removing people who are only distantly related to us – these people have a place in our lives, maybe in holiday cards or as LinkedIn connections, but Anuchat is a platform for people with whom you have a close relationship. It’s not intended as the platform for building all your new ones.

We have a few ways to help people feel more secure in sharing themselves, which should show up in our “Features” page (but to name a few: deleting all posts after 14 days, only showing comments made by mutual friends, and no public “like” counter), and we also have some methods for supporting engagement with close relationships regularly. For example, the platform has built-in reminders when contact is lost for an extended period of time. The goal isn’t just to keep the flame going, at times it’s to ask ourselves: “Are we still close enough for this type of friendship?”

Harsh. Yeah. A bit. And we’re not your therapist, we can’t stop you from connecting with all of your high school friends and maintaining toxic interactions. But we can nudge you strongly to carve out a place for yourself in this network, without making it into a drama.

We also try to reduce “lurking” on the platform. It’s acceptable, but not encouraged. Since we don’t run ads nor try to suck the life out of people, our engagement is intended to create good conversation between friends, genuine vulnerability, and amicable discourse. It’s alright to take a step back at times, maybe even desired, but you can’t really hide in a space surrounded by others who are supposed to be close to you. We don’t just have a “keep alive” protocol, we encourage people to reach out to each other. And inaction means profiles are marked inactive and cycled out of friend-lists.

Final Words

Trimming your network should be easy. Taking a break for a while should be easy, and disengaging should be an action without regrets. Keeping in touch should be easy, too. Whether you are naturally inclined to it or not. So long as it’s good for your long term health, and your genuine wants. What really matters to us in Anuchat is that you don’t scroll mindlessly, but make at least some conscious decision what you’re getting and doing.

What I’m trying to say is that Social Media had some good parts. Let’s keep those. But maybe we can do with a bit less media and a little more social.
Give Anuchat a try. Maybe it’s good for you.