Facebook: a wondrous social networking site that enables people to connect with, reconnect with, share with, support, and live vicariously through one another. I have befriended people I haven’t really thought of since grade school. I also have come to find out that, as much as people change, we all have certain aspects of our personalities that remain the same in adulthood as they were in childhood… especially our senses of humor. Facebook can be a great thing.
Facebook can also suck. Facebook is a world unto itself. We manage relationships on Facebook differently than we handle real, live relationships in the non-Internet world. Sometimes, however, the line between on-line relationships and off-line relationships is blurred. I like to think of myself as the kind of guy who doesn’t really care what the vast majority of people think of him. I like to think that I really don’t care if I piss someone off. I like to think… not often, but sometimes…
I am trying to come to terms with unfriending on Facebook. It’s kind of funny, I don’t believe “unfriending” was even a word until online social networks came into existence. … and it sounds so harsh. UNFRIEND! This is the ending of a relationship. This is making a proclamation that the person you are unfriending is no longer someone you want to stay connected with in the online world.
Have I ever unfriended someone? Well, to be honest, I have. I went through a phase where I was adding friends left and right. I was friending friends’ friends, I was friending people I barely knew, and I was friending people I didn’t have the foggiest about except they played the same games I used to play on Facebook (Mafia Wars, Vampire Wars, etc.) My friend-adding rampage was back when I was first getting this blog started. I figured the more “friends” that I had, the more people who would click the occasional link to this blog that I shared on Facebook… and the more people that I could share my wickedly funny sense of humor with… or something. And then I started to realize that people who don’t actually know me might not get my sense of humor. I tend to be slightly sarcastic and, maybe, a little cynical. Not everyone can relate. One of the cool things about my friend-requesting rampage is that I found some people that I barely know in “real life”, or that I really don’t know at all, who have some remarkable things to say from time to time, or are just kind of fun to keep up with (the whole “living vicariously” thing). I have found people who “get” my sense of humor, make smart-assy comments back to me, and make some pretty smart-assy posts of their own! These people are all still my Facebook friends. A few months after my rampage, I started going through all of these new friends that had accepted me for whatever reason. I started to to feel kind of stupid for having so many friends who I knew absolutely nothing about. The dude in England who was an excellent vampire in Vampire Wars really didn’t probably care that I was ready to turn 40… and probably never clicked on my links… plus he was taking up a ton of my homepage with all of his vampire-ish accomplishments. This was the point where I went through a lot of unfriending. I removed everyone who was just a gaming friend, and I removed everyone who I thought might be annoyed by my posts, comments, or shared links. And then the guilt set in: the guilt that maybe some of those people that I unfriended actually liked being my Facebook friend… that even though I never heard from them in comments or relevant posts, they will miss me and feel slighted that I had unfriended them. I felt bad… and, at times, I still do.
I still have way too many friends on Facebook. There are still some who I have no contact with who are pretty much just taking up space in my list of friends. But I figure, “Hey, if they want out, they can bail.” Whether I lose those “friends” on a regular basis or not, I don’t know because I really don’t miss them when they’re gone.
What gets me is the people I know, who I actually personally know, who I have been Facebook friends with (and I assumed at least “acquaintances” with offline), who I don’t believe I have ever said anything to personally offend… who all of a sudden show up in my “people you may know” list, and Facebook points out that I can “Add as friend” these people who were … I thought… already friends (at least they didn’t completely block me, I guess).
“Hey, wait a second… we already were friends. What happened?” And of course, the first thing to go through my head is, “What did I do… and I’m sorry?!?” I have no clue what I did to drive this friend away, but something happened to our online relationship that led them to horrifyingly unfriend me. The kicker is, how do you overcome the unfriending on Facebook when you see this person face-to-face in real life again? They made a statement that they want nothing to do with your jokey-little-ass on Facebook (where they can actually block you from certain aspects of your Facebook presence and theirs and still keep the friendly relationship), so why in the world would they actually want to even share the same breathing space with you in person? I can’t imagine that they would. It’s like a real human relationship has been decided by the click of one little link on Facebook: “Remove from friends”.
What’s funny is, in the real world, you may lose a friendship, but you usually know why it ended. No one is going to come up to you in person and say, “I’m removing you from my friends… please have nothing to do with me ever again,” without you having a question or two. Online, it just seems kind of creepy to send a message to someone who recently unfriended you, “Hey, what happened… why’d you drop me?”
For me, I just try to think that maybe they accidentally hit the “Remove from friends” link. I could message them (or ask them in person) why for with the unfriending hostility… and if it was a mistake, they can say, “Oh, man, I didn’t mean to unfriend you… I’ll send you another invite and we can be friends again!” Of course, I think I’d rather just suspect that the removal was an accident on their part and… someday… they will notice the mistake and request my friendship again. We all know better, but I gotta do what I can for my self-esteem 😉
I know that being a smart-ass and a cynic and depressingly funny at times can turn people off. When I started this blog, I knew a few (or many more) people would be turned-off by what I was going to write. I didn’t set out to make friends with my happy-stinking-joy attitude. I guess my attitude here spills over onto my Facebook account from time to time (or, all the time).
With a blog, if people disagree with you, or think you’re a jerk, or wish you would get run over by a steamroller, they can leave a comment or send you an email telling you what an ass you are. They usually just don’t go to your blog again.
With Facebook, if people disagree with you, or think you’re a jerk, or wish you would get run over by a steamroller, they can also leave a comment or send you a message telling you what an ass you are. Because Facebook is a little more personal than a blog, for some people, unfriending must be a little less sloppy way to say they’ve had enough 🙂
Getting unfriended on Facebook is something I just need to do a better job of coming to terms with… but it makes me want to write in my online outlets how I really feel sometimes. Oh yeah… that’s right… I’ve been doing a PG-13 version of the Happy Stinking Joy of life, while a R (or maybe even NC-17) version would help me feel like I’m getting more off my chest. I’m gonna keep it at PG-13, however… ’cause I can’t stand losing those stinking Facebook friends…