Unfriendliness

I love Facebook. It is the new Christmas card. That’s the way I perceive Facebook these days. Whatever else it may be to me on a daily basis, I consider it at the very least to be the way I will stay in touch with people whom I don’t connect with very often. Instead of some ratty old scribbled-on, perpetually-incorrect and out-of-date address book like the one my mother has been dragging around for decades, Facebook lets me know where old neighbors, distant relatives, former colleagues, and middle-school girlfriends can be found if I need them, and often tells me what they are up to these days. Facebook gives me all of this without any effort at all. That’s why Facebook is cool.

But Facebook also gives me so much more. I can waste time during the day socializing with more current and geographically present friends, including those I do actually spend time with in person, when we are otherwise supposed to be working at our respective and supposed jobs. It reminds me of all the specials and events happening at my favorite local pubs. It updates my address book automatically with new profile photos of my friends, even the funny ones, so I see them on my phone when they call me. The other day I thought Duran Duran was trying to call me from the 80s, but it turns out my little sister just likes Duran Duran. Even if it means I sometimes have to be aware of how awesome Joe is at playing Mafia Wars, and how many barns Karen has on her virtual farm, it is totally worth it.

I once thought that having an Excel file with all my friends’ names, phone numbers, and email addresses in it was a big improvement over my mother’s address book, because I didn’t have to erase or scribble anything out to update it. I don’t have to update Facebook at all.

And even though this all happens more or less automatically, I still have options. I can choose whether to participate, and to what degree. I can post status updates, or just be nosey and read everyone else’s updates, commenting only when I have something mean to say. I can post pictures of my kids and/or my ridiculous drunken escapades while the kids are away with their mother, or not. I can post current photos of myself if I feel like it, or only old and awesome ones. I can look at photos of other people’s kids, and pretend I care by commenting about how cute they are, or I can make fun of them from a safe distance without hurting anyone’s feelings. I can keep separate lists of people with whom I have different kinds of relationships, and control what each of those groups of people sees. I can make sure that no one from work sees photos of my kids or is ever otherwise aware that I sometimes participate in wholesome family activities. I can make sure that my family members never see anything that might even slightly resemble professional activity. I can make sure that everyone sees the photos from outside the strip club. I have a very poor reputation to maintain, and Facebook helps me reach my goals.

I have some friends, henceforth referred to as “individuals formerly known as friends” because everyone knows that use of the term “friend” only applies to Facebook, who swear they will never use Facebook because of some deep-held philosophical, moral, or ethical convictions. I think that is a lot of bullshit. And I don’t say this only because I have no philosophy, morals, or ethics of my own. I also really mean it.
Some of these individuals formerly known as friends tell me that their disinterest in Facebook is a result of their preference to communicate “face-to-face” because it provides a richer and more meaningful interpersonal experience.

Bullshit.

If I avoided communicating with my friends and family except when there were time and opportunity to participate in a rich and meaningful interpersonal experience I wouldn’t have any friends or family at all. I spend time with people “face-to-face” when I can, but that time has never, to my knowledge, been described as a rich and meaningful interpersonal experience. Nor should time spent with me ever be considered such a thing. I am not that kind of guy.

Also, at least once, this concept of objection was explained to me via text message.

Still other individuals formerly known as friends tell me they are unwilling to make information about themselves available “out there on the internet” because they are afraid that something terrible might happen if a hundred old friends know what their new puppy looks like. Right-on. They just shouldn’t expect to hear from me very often. I am usually too busy removing tags from photos of myself to participate in any voice-based communicative exchanges.

But of all the new and unexpected social devices adopted by our culture as a result of our nearly universal embrace of social networking, my favorite is unfriending.

The Urban Dictionary defines “unfriend” as the act of removing a friend from your Facebook account.

I know there are a variety of different reasons for unfriending. I am not too concerned with the unfriendings that occur because you didn’t really want to share your life with an old acquaintance but you were too pussy to deny their initial friend request. I have done that, and sadly, have had it done to me. Likewise I get that you might want to unfriend people with whom you have had no actual contact for quite some time. I think this is especially popular with the kids these days who may have thousands of friends because they routinely add everyone with whom they ever come in contact. I can also appreciate more blanket unfriendings that sometimes occur as a reaction to a personal need for more privacy, perhaps in reaction to a stalker scare, or maybe because you want to share more information with fewer people. That is all good. I don’t have to stalk anyone. It is just a hobby.

The kind of unfriending that amuses me the most, is the angry unfriend. That one is going to be a classic.

The angry unfriend occurs when one person is mad at another person, and instead of, or perhaps in addition to an actual discussion about said disagreement, offense, or annoyance, one person removes the other from their list of friends on Facebook. That shit is hilarious. It is meant to be a punishment of some kind, and to send some sort of message. But it is the dumbest punishment ever, and typically sends no message at all. Still, it happens all the time.

It happened to me at least once that I know about. I pissed off my sister, and she unfriended me.

In my case the only reason I noticed at all is because my sister is one of those people who posts a lot of stupid shit on her Facebook wall all the time. Once upon a time I had to scroll past all her crap to get to any interesting updates from drinking buddies or good-looking women. One day I didn’t have to scroll at all. I knew immediately what had happened. And even though I don’t like my sister, and I was tired of seeing her horoscope or whatever crap she always posted, it still hurt my feelings a little. For passive-aggressive types, and you know who they are, unfriending might be the most powerful tool available.

But the thing is, it hurt my feelings in the dumbest way possible. I wasn’t actually hurt because she unfriended me, I expected that. We did have an argument in the real world. I was hurt because she didn’t even make the effort to actually tell me to fuck off. She could even have simply ignored me completely for a few years, and I might still have respected that. But unfriending me was just pussy.

The truth is that unfriending just doesn’t matter. It is pointless. When you unfriend someone they are not notified in any way. The person you unfriend would have to notice that you unfriended them. Typically I suppose this would happen if for some reason they tried to visit your page and were unable to access the information they wanted. But how often does that happen? For most of us, when you unfriend us, it just means you disappear from our newsfeed. Aside from the example above, I am not sure I would notice if someone disappeared from my newsfeed. People come and go all the time. I don’t regularly visit people’s Facebook pages except to get more information about something I saw posted on my newsfeed. I suspect most of us are like that. That is why we like Facebook. It is low-maintenance. It brings information to us so we don’t need to spend our time going out to gather it.

So what kind of ego is involved in unfriending out of anger? I think it assumes a level of interest in your own shit that may not actually exist. To even make the effort to find someone in your friends list and unfriend them you must assume that the former friend will notice the unfriending and therefore get the message with the intended impact. Why would you even bother otherwise? I don’t think I could assume that anyone would notice if I unfriended them. I imagine maybe I have been unfriended by more people than I realize. I don’t know. But I guess they showed me.

I try to imagine my mother, in years before the internet, being offended by a neighbor, or someone at church, and racing furiously to scribble their name, address, and phone number out of her address book.

Now that just seems silly.