Facebook Unfriending: Unfriendly Behavior or Just Plain Good Business?
Social media connective jargon establishes relationships between community members who opt to share personal and information, status updates, and other engagement venues. Facebook calls these people Friends, LinkedIn lets members establish Connections, and Twitter members collect Followers.
Facebook has additional tiers of relationships: Members can opt-in and join Groups, and they can become Fans on Facebook Fan Pages.
What is a Facebook Friend? Facebook members share contact and profile information, status updates, photos, videos, and links. Facebook Terms of Service discourage business dealings on profile pages, preferring to see members establish Fan Pages to create a professional presence.
What happens when a Facebook Friend is a person’s friend in the bricks and mortar world and something goes awry with the relationship? In the offline world, it’s an easy matter to shut off the communication spigot. Friends stop making telephone calls, stop sharing e-mail, and they pass on opportunities to share meals and attend parties together.
In the social media space, the party goes on. Discussion threads between mutual friends seed and nurture engagement about business and personal milestones and other events. The same people who no longer break bread together find themselves in the same “rooms” on mutual friends’ Walls, at Fan Pages, in Groups, and at the same Events.
At times, the word Friend becomes disingenuous. People dissolve their Facebook friendships with a single click of a link, Remove from Friends. It is simple and easy. No lawyer needed. No papers. No muss, no fuss.
“NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – “Unfriend” has been named the word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary, chosen from a list of finalists with a tech-savvy bent. Unfriend was defined as a verb that means to remove someone as a “friend” on a social networking site such as Facebook …”
Unfriending is a useful tool to eliminate toxic thoughts and energy. I take it one step further, using the “Block” tool in Privacy Settings for more egregious offenders.
I’ve Unfriended several people and people have Unfriended me. These are some reasons I Unfriend people on Facebook and they Unfriend me:
- People post their advertising links or messages on my wall. It is very poor form to post commercial messages on other people’s Walls. Sometimes it is easy to simply delete the offending post and alert the poster about our-of-bounds behavior. My Unfriending follows a couple of network marketing travel representatives posting their links on my Wall. I don’t like the cheesy multi-level marketing (MLM) flavor and persistent posting on my Wall annoys me. Unfriending is a simple solution to filter unwanted MLM advertising. Color this brand of Unfriending good business.
- I Unfriend people I do not like. I do not Unfriend people when we have differing views about politics and issues of the day. I love engagement among people of different political persuasions. What I do not like is scheming and underhanded behavior that pits people against each other and advances personal agendas I find bothersome. I Unfriend for this reason about six times a year. If I find someone particularly toxic I will use the Block User privacy setting that makes the person invisible to me. In that case, the person’s comments and name do not appear in common discussion threads with mutual friends and our profiles and information are not searchable by each other. I presently have five people on my Block User list. I cannot see them and they cannot see me and this suits me just fine. Color this brand of Unfriending personal and proactive soul cleanse.
- I Unfriend people when I need personal space. Sometimes there are personal issues between people in the offline world … hurt feelings, betrayal of confidence, and other matters make it common sense to create a distance online and offline. Sometimes personal dynamics heal and Unfriended persons decide to click the Friend button again. Color this brand of Unfriend necessary, sad, and disappointing.
- I’ve been Unfriended and Blocked by major industry influencers following a series of blog posts I wrote earlier this year and about foreclosures and predatory marketers in the real estate industry, and a “Foreclosure Hall of Shame” television show taping targeting these same companies. I have been dropped from groups and shunned in social networks because I identify predatory marketing campaigns by name and design. My efforts to establish a line of communication in those quarters are unsuccessful. For a time I was sad, but I have arrived at the other side of disappointment. Instead,I am learning to wear this Unfriend badge with honor. Color this brand of Unfriend proud.
Friendship is a precious commodity. I worry that social media jargon trivializes a word that seeds inspiration for poetry and song.
Friendship is a word I used very sparingly over the years, and applied it to select persons in my life who make my world a richer place.
Perhaps I am too selective.
Is a friend a prize rose, nurtured and pruned, magnificent among all others?
Or is a friend a wildflower, sharing the space in a heart with thousands just like it, lending its perfume and beauty to the world on its own terms?
I know what it means for me to be a friend … I am an imperfect person and I am sorry for fractures and fissions of my own design. I know a thing or two about unconditional love … but I struggle mightily with broken trust.
I love my friends and I am thankful for their presence in my life.
I love select Unfriends and I am thankful for their presence in my life and their contribution to my personal development.
Joeann Fossland, MCC, once told me, “Bewilderment is a growing place to be.” If that is true, I must be growing by leaps and bounds these days. Color me bewildered.
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Comments
As always Fran, you have great insight. I’ve been trying diligently to use facebook but lately, they upgraded, then had bugs, then rolled back. Now I can’t get on the site and they suggest I uninstall and reinstall. LOL, did that and lost all my friends.
Technolgogy is great, WHEN it works.
Fran, I’ve thought alot about this too.
In general I think we are losing the boundaries between what is public and private. Facebook is great for business and general, light interaction. But I don’t think it fulfills the needs of most friends. Many people I know will not post personal stuff on FB, they only want to use it for games or very light topics. But on the other hand, do I need to know when Joe Jones stopped for coffee?
It will be interesting to see how we wind up using these outlets in the coming years. It is still a very new medium.
Where did you get your blog layout from? I’d like to get one like it for my blog.
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