Managing your Facebook 'friends': JUST SAY NO

I've recently met someone who took a rather radical step: he removed a huge chunk of people from his Facebook's friends list, as well as removing himself from a few groups.

The action have gotten some pretty angry reaction from the removee ('why does this guy remove me for no reason?' 'I've never liken that guy anyway!' 'what an asshole!'), but that've gotten me thinking: are we putting too much value in Facebook 'friends' that it's easy to fall into the trap of being in an imaginary abusive 'friendship?'.

JUST SAY NO!

I think it's highly deceiving to list your contacts as 'friends': maybe words like 'contacts' or 'acquaintance' are more accurate in designating some of those people. But does that necessarily mean 'friendship' on Facebook is much shallower than, say, a 'real' friendship?

I don't think we have to really be cold turkey and dismiss most of the people in our list as being 'not real' friends. For me essentially the core of Facebook is for you to connect with people - so for some that might include adding a bunch of people in the hope of trying to get to know them better...

But that does seem like a misguided effort. After all, there's only so much people you can truly give away your time to know what they've been up doing with their everyday life (aka people you truly give a shit about) isn't it? Now try and extrapolate that by imagining how much you might mean to the other guy (aka people that give a shit about you).

And that I believe is a good start in managing a seemingly large number of people in your list.

Do I truly want to spend my time listening to what this other person is doing in his/her life?

Do I really want to share what I feel with this other person?

Are they going to notice if I removed them off the list?

And the biggest reason for you to really consider removing them: is this person's online presence really bothers me?

If so, know that you always have a choice:

JUST SAY NO!

Interestingly the person I mentioned earlier have said that the action helped him to stick with the people he truly give a shit about, and vice versa - his reasoning was that if they truly wanted to connect with him and all that, then they'd have no problem in asking again to connect. Those that were angry and harbour a sort of grudge would be the one at loss, rather than him - and that is something I would agree.

So at the end of the day, take your Facebook 'friends' with a large pinches of salts. And remember, you always have choice to pick who are the ones in your list - or having fail that, there's always the option of managing what you see from them. We always have a choice in having less drama and horseshit.

JUST SAY NO!