Facebook is an amazing site. It allows people to get back in touch with one another after many years. It’s a great time waster at work and there are some pretty cool applications on there. That said it can be incredibly addicting and if you’re like me you can get caught up in the hype. Similar to MySpace and LinkedIn, Facebook allows you to become “friends” with people. They need to approve you as a friend but there’s really nothing to it. Once that’s occurred, you’re able to view information about them (whatever they’ve set up as available at least) and they can see info about you.
People share all kinds of stuff from pictures, stories of their past, work details, family details, etc. If you’re a true “friend” with someone wouldn’t you already know most of that stuff? When I first joined Facebook I used the “I’ll accept anyone who friends me” method of accumulating friends. I certainly didn’t want to anger the Facebook Gods. Then one day I looked up and noticed that I had 406 friends (ironic number huh?). Um what the hell?!?!? I don’t know 400 people let alone have 400 friends. Sure I’ve run across hundreds of people in my lifetime between schools, work, etc. but that doesn’t necessarily make them my “friend”. I’d long heard the concept of a “Facebook whore” and I really didn’t understand it… until just now.
So I made a decision. I starting “de-friending” people on Facebook. I’m down into the 300’s and I’m sure that I’ve got many more to cuts to come in my own personal spring training roster reduction. This doesn’t mean that I don’t “like” these people. It simply means that I’m not going to open up my online world to you just because we were introduced once in college. Don’t take it personally. If we reconnect then I’ll be more than happy to add you again somewhere down the road. I have to tell you that this feels really good. My online identity is part of who I am. I don’t go around sharing pictures of my kids with random people off the street so why would I share them with someone that I shared a cubicle with 10 years ago in a state I no longer live in. I don’t know about you but I wasn’t friends with all 30,000 people that went to my college and I’m not friends with everyone that I’ve ever shared a company with. Just because some program tells me that I may also know them doesn’t make it so…
Just as a follow up… I’m now down to 228 friends on facebook. Again, this isn’t to say that I don’t like those people that I’ve “de-friended” just that I haven’t talked to them in about 10-15 years.
Just a word of warning… facebook apparently just deletes friends at random. I had fully intended on deleting a bunch of contacts on there (per this post) but for some reason it deleted a TON of others without me knowing. Not sure if I clicked on something wrong or not. Just wanted to let you know if you intend on deleting people just make sure you’re not deleting people you don’t want to.