Defriending

I've written about Facebook a few times before. I wrote about the amusing relationship status here, I've written about going to meet friends I made online here and here. But today I am going to write about something that is truly a Facebook experience. Friend requests, friending and defriending.

The fact that you know what I mean when I say friending and defriending shows you are part of this brave new online world. Remember when you used to make friends with people instead of sending a request? Or have a fight, a falling out, a drifting apart instead of defriending? Now we get a little message from someone who wants to be our friend and we get to say yes or no.

The online game I play is easier with more people on your friend list so I get random requests for adds. I don't take them. A lot of my online friends will add anyone and then hide them. That means they are there, they help them with the game, but they don't ever see their status updates or pictures or anything like that. I just don't add someone unless I have "talked" to them through the game. And talked to them for awhile. And I will also "clean" my list every once in awhile. Drop off people that I don't talk to after all, that have stopped playing the game or that I cannot remember how they were added in the first place.

Real world friends are a little different. I am always amazed to get a request from someone I knew in high school. With my attendance record and my drifter tendencies I am always shocked that anyone remembers me. I tend to remember them, I have a good memory for faces and names and I can usually pick out at least one memory with that person, either in one of my classes or at some event or another. But I am still amazed when I get a request from someone who actually remembers who I was in school. Those I accept. And then I sit on my hands so I don't send them a message to see if they really remember me or if it's Brent's last name that they remember!

Spouses of people that are already on my list get an automatic add if they send a request. I figure if I saw them on a daily basis they would be a package deal so they get to be the same online. If someone I am friends with recommends a friend of theirs, sort of an online introduction I will add them. I have two friends on my list right now that I have never met in real life, I don't play the game with them, but they are friends of friends and so they got an add to the list.

So that's how you get on the list. But what happens when you need to get someone off the list? And why do you choose to do it? What is your line? I mentioned the house cleaning aspect of the game friends. I will clear off people that I haven't talked to outside of the game, that I am not sure how they were added after all or that you find out are just not your cup of tea. I have been defriended and have defriended people over online arguments as well. Twice by people who were mad at me because I didn't defriend someone they were fighting with and they thought it was some sort of betrayal. To which I responded, are you 12? So yeah, they dropped me off their lists. Once I was caught in the crossfire of someone fighting with a group of people and since I was in the group I was wiped with everyone else. Once I was defriended by someone after I told them to grow the fuck up. I will take that one. :-)

And I have hidden one person and dropped two off of my lists from people I talked to as well. The person I hid I didn't want to defriend. They seemed nice enough, but they had a lot of drama in their lives on a daily basis that I just didn't want to see so I clicked the handy little hide button and off they went. One person I defriended because she ended up being more than a little crazy. In that stalker sort of way. I'd never met her in real life, played the game with her and volunteered to help her out since she was a little confused on how to play. Then she started sending me messages about who I was talking to and when. If I didn't answer a PM from her she would send me another telling me she KNEW I was online...it was just a little too much so off she went.

The last person I dropped from my list was a different choice. And it was actually one I didn't make as soon as I should have. Sometimes you add someone that you have "met" online and then once they are on your friend list and you see their status updates and they see yours you get a much fuller picture of who they are. Like stalker woman who then was bounced from my list. Sometimes it takes time though to get a full picture. And then you start to doubt yourself. A comment here and there that doesn't agree with my political/social/religious views doesn't bother me at all. To use a cliche..."some of my best friends are Republican" but it is true. I don't have to agree with you on everything to like you. But what I do need from you is respect.

My friend list is much like my music list (I know I think I talked about a music blog two years ago, I will get to it!), it's varied and mixed and some songs work well together and some don't. But I like them all. My friends must behave the same way. I have liberal/conservative/Christian/Muslim/Atheist/I'll figure it out laters all posting together, I have all ages and people from a variety of countries as well. And as long as you are able to keep the discourse civil I keep you on my list. But if you step outside, you get a warning, a comment deleted, a PM telling you to please be respectful, and then you are gone. Don't treat someone with an opposing viewpoint as an idiot. Don't argue with what C calls the Amazon.com method of arguing. "Other people who have made this argument have also made the following arguments, would you like to argue these points even though they have not been made in this discussion?"

And as far as the religious argument goes, I will hold you to no greater standard than anyone else until you decide to take higher moral ground based on your religion. If you are standing at the pulpit preaching down at the masses you better lead a pretty pristine life or I am going to call you on it. If I see that the entire reason you are up at that pulpit is so you can look down the blouse of the woman in the front row you have lost your moral high ground. And yes, I have less tolerance for the religious hypocrites because I know their rule book pretty well and I know what they are supposed to be doing, so don't tell my other friends their life choices are wrong when you aren't even playing by your own rules.

So what do you do when someone on your list is breaking your rules of life? Do you ignore it? Do you drop them? Do you block them? It's an interesting place to be in. In the real world you wouldn't be friends with them. If you worked with them you would avoid the lunch room when they were there. What if you share a lot of friends in common so you are going to run in to them? Again, in the real world you might not like all of your friends friends so would you skip a party if there was a chance that person would show up?

Facebook has a handy feature called blocking. If you REALLY don't want to see someone ever again you block them. Then they cannot see you, if you post on the same status, comment on the same photo, they can't see you and you can't see them. It's handy but can be confusing if you've blocked or been blocked. Everyone else can see all of the posts and people have conversations that end up looking one-sided. So blocking is a tough one to use if you share a lot of friends. And it also makes me laugh to think of if you could use it in the real world. "I can't see you...I can't hear you...You don't exist to me!"

So I dropped one person and then blocked them when they reached the point that I couldn't even stand to see their name. I knew a post from them meant preaching/lecturing/hypocrisy or some combination of them all so I dropped and blocked. But the funny thing is I waited for a much longer time than I ever would have in the real world. I made a lot of excuses why it wasn't that big of a deal (it's just online, it's not really real, it's not that big of a deal, we have a lot of friends in common)and the whole time my husband and one of my close friends were telling me, "Drop him! He's an idiot/tool. He pisses you off. He's a jerk masquerading as a good guy. He's an intellectual fraud!" They were both hitting all of the things they knew I wouldn't stand for in my life, but for some reason I let this guy slide. Then he committed the two unforgivable acts in one day. First he argued over a post that he didn't even bother to read first, just saw the caption, made the assumption that he knew what it was about and went in with his Amazon.com style. The second was he was condescending to C.

Did you all just gasp out-loud? Yep, he thought that he could get away with being rude to my son. That finally snapped me out it and BOOM! Off the list, blocked out. Probably best that it was online since in the real world it might have equated to a slap in the face instead of a delete. And I felt much better. Eventually I lifted the block, the one-sided conversations were annoying. And we still share a large number of friends, but I just treat his posts and ramblings like they aren't there.

I learned a lesson with that experience and that's all you can really hope for out of a bad situation. I won't ever try to discount an online experience as less than real again. For one thing I have now had the opportunity to meet a lot of the folks I talk to online in the real world and they are just like they are online. So if someone is a jerk online you can bet they are a jerk in the real world too. Like my brilliant son says..."The people in the magic box are real" and the people I choose to interact with through the magic box are really awesome.

And then this blog brought this clip to mind so enjoy!