Mar 17 2009

De-Friending on Facebook

Published by jl at 11:36 am under Main Page

Last summer, after a series of unpleasant events that involved deceit and disrespect, I had a huge falling out with my troubled cousin. So angry at the time, I de-friended him on Facebook. Half a year later, I login this morning to find a message in my FB inbox titled “Really!?!” In it, said cousin makes a one-sided rehashing of past events, most of it accusatory, and concludes that other families have put up with worse and we should put things behind us, all with a lack of contrition or acceptance of blame. Pretty heavy stuff for breakfast.
 
Well, forgiveness/absolution issues aside, FB has become a medium for me where I share my thoughts and social life with, um, friends. Like many people who get friend requests from their mothers or colleagues, I have a reluctance to share many of the things about me that are on this social network. So it would seem perfectly reasonable for me to not want this part of my life to be an open book with somebody I have nothing in common with other than some DNA sequences. For once the adage, “You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family” gets turned around for the good – I can choose my friends, including those online.
 
So it took him half a year to discover this act of Internet dissing. Looking back on that post about him, the very first post of this blog no less, I realize that back then I overlooked his clueless-ness, attributing it mostly to youth. But four years have passed already. Some things never change.
 

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3 responses so far

  • Michael

    If you wanted to share certain things with your “real” friends only, without offending anyone by actually “de-friending” them, you can always create groups in FB, add all your “real” friends to it and then only share pictures/ quotes/ whatever with said group instead of all your friends (which is default). A bit of work, but quite effective, at times.

  • Michael

    If you wanted to share certain things with your “real” friends only, without offending anyone by actually “de-friending” them, you can always create groups in FB, add all your “real” friends to it and then only share pictures/ quotes/ whatever with said group instead of all your friends (which is default). A bit of work, but quite effective, at times.

  • jl

    That’s a great idea. Nowadays, we don’t always have the option to choose which social networks are meant for true socializing and which for professional. For example, it’s hard to turn down friend requests from a business contact and ask her to connect on LinkedIn instead. Thanks for the tip.