The State of Removal.

It's time for an honest and open dialogue about Facebook and it's function in our lives. Let's say that a rigorous FB user to be unnamed has 203 friends. That's a lot of friends to be had. However, on a seemingly normal day, this committed Face-bookie logs in and notices that she now has 202 friends. 202. The Face-bookie breaks into a cold sweat - and feels the embarassment in her gut as she starts frantically wondering, who? why? She opens her list of friends and starts scrolling down. Who's the missing link? She can't seem to find anyone missing. Then, she remembers - that guy she met in Bioethics class who was obsessed with Josef Mengele and his "experiments." Her feelings were hurt - even though Heinrich was weird - what did she do wrong to lose his FB friendship?

She reviews every detail of their "friendship." Where did she go wrong? Surely it wasn't because she was rude to him - that's definitely not it. She listened to his rants about Mengele with attentive politeness. It couldn't have been because she got married and changed her last name - although that would be convenient if he didn't remember who she was based on her profile - but the day of her wedding, he wrote in huge block letters, "CONGRATULATIONS for giving in to eternally blissful slavery" on her wall! Was it because he was doing some housecleaning and as a result adopted the "less is more" theory? But if so, why her?? Why this nice Face-bookie who ate lunch with him two times and picked up his pen when he dropped it on the floor that one time in class? It just didn't make sense.

On November 17, 2010, National Unfriend Day happened. Jimmy Kimmel promoted it. I miraculously survived mostly unscathed that day - and I didn't partake in the unfriending. It seemed like such a logical, marvelous idea - but there are consequences to unfriending somebody. There's really no turning back. Face-bookies like the loyal user above are running rampant with these misconceptions that FB is more than what it actually is, as Kimmel pointed out. It's not a substitution for friendship, because friending someone on FB means virtually nothing. It's simply "social networking," right?

Obviously not, because then people wouldn't remove friends out of a sense of superiority or revenge, which often happens. I removed a rather nice guy two years ago because he didn't invite me to his wedding. Granted, he invited my parents, and I grew up with him - so it's really not so undeserved - but I regret it anyway. When Facebook is the lowest form of friendship you can have with somebody, and still, someone would remove you, it's equivalent to them telling you, "I want absolutely nothing to do with you - no photos, no updates, no statuses about your sick dog - get out of my life!" Isn't it? Personally, I'd rather not run the risk of making someone believe that I feel that way about them (unless I do...). Of course, there are valid reasons to remove a person from your FB pool...for example, if you meet each other's eyes in the school lunchroom and there is no friendly exchange whatsoever - just cold staring - that deserves unfriend action. However, frequently the reasons are less than deserving.

I had one person defriend me last year because I didn't get her a bachelorette party gift as quickly as she wanted me to (or at least, that's my theory). It's amusing how this social networking site, in it's cold aloofness that makes it safe to be friends with people you hardly know, still has the capacity to cause pain. Or rather, just plain annoyance and stress. It hardly seems worth it to chase somebody down and ask them, "Tell me why you removed me from your Facebook! Why??", because, if they did, they're not really your friend and probably won't have a satisfying answer because of the elementary nature of the social networking site. You can hide certain sections of information from people. You can talk behind their back in a message and then write "Have a great day!" on their wall. You can block them, unblock them, and block them again. You can browse their pictures, hate their choice of outfit, and then click "Like" when they are posing with Santa Claus. Basically, Facebook is high school again. We dismiss good manners and revert.

Is it really so authentic? Do we really need to have 400 friends we don't talk to? No. But I'd rather not disappear from 400 people's pages leaving them with the cold embarassment that accompanies it. Spread love. Don't reject people for petty reasons.


Be more authentic by being less authentic. Show your character in your Facebook etiquette. That's all I have to say today.