I don’t think I realized just how insecure I was until I joined Facebook two years ago. I thought the 12 or so years of therapy would have resulted in a more evolved woman. But here’s the truth: every time I lose a friend on Facebook I take it personally.
Yes, that is ridiculous. I know. But I still feel the blow.
I try not to remember the number of friends I have when I go to bed at night, but somehow it sticks—unlike every phone number I’ve tried to memorize. So, upon logging on to Facebook every morning, I immediately notice that I lost two friends overnight. While I was sleeping!
What especially irks me is when I lose three friends right after I post something. Now I know that it probably has nothing to do with the content of my post, but it’s the same punch in the gut that I feel when I read an unkind comment on one of my posts: “You are the most self-absorbed, clueless, bad writer I’ve ever come across…”
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I have been defriended by people I didn’t like anyway. We disagreed about something on a wall post and they booted me. I’ve gotten rid of people I don’t like or I have made me mad. I don’t need the aggravation so it is easy to boot them. Don’t take it personally. I don’t.
Yes, I have been defriended. By a family member, no less. He was a somewhat distant family member, but seemed to have still insulted me by doing so. Turns out he’s a majorly religious man that utterly hates any profanity that, not I, but one of my other FB friends have posted. a “comment agrguement” insued between them and then I never heard from him again.
Yes Michael has reminded me of another incident I had. I had found a long lost best friend/ ex boyfriend from ten years ago. I became FB friends with him and also joined his fan-based FB page over an Xbox game. Here and there I made silly comments on his pics and posts he also made on the page. Somewhere out of the blue. his wife decides to post a repsonse to a comment I made including how sexually attracted I must be to his husband and that Im stalking him. Needless to say, I sent my friend a personal message explaining how crazy I think his wife is and that I wished him the best and deleted our friendship. Its unfortunate and I carry some hate for her and her misunderstanding. I wish I could stay in touch with my childhood best friend but, not when Im being coldly accused like that.
Hello, wake up, lady!!! I must assume you are not married, because if you are your husband probably wouldn’t be too thrilled, either. And how about you? Would you be just reeeaally OK if your spouse or boyfriend “was just catching up” over & over again with with his ex-girlfriend? In case you’ve been asleep for 10 yrs, contact thru the Internet, be it porn or “just catching up” w/an old romantic interest is the #1 cause of infidelity in this country!
And, besides, where there’s smoke there’s fire!
it is amazing to me how some people post the most opinionated, polarizing things on fb. i always think, “i wish i had the guts to say something like that”. me- i normally censor myself, rewriting several times before the finality of clicking “share”. LOL
I have 11 Facebook friends. I have no interest in accumulating vast collections of people I don’t care about. So I have 4 cousins, 2 former students, my kids, a former colleague, and my best friend.
Good article Therese!
Thank you for your vulnerability. Loved the article. Strangely, I have no idea if I have been unfriended on Facebook. I never noticed. I am generally very sensitive to rejection/abandonment, so that seems like a good reason to continue not knowing.
I do not think most of my facebook friends are friends anyway. They are people I know and am interested in seeing what’s up with their lives. My fav are the funny ones. You usually can tell if one is a friend because they take time with you to care when you need it and they stick around for years. They return your calls and accept your invites..People think I have many friends, but I don’t buy it unless they are sharing real feelings and following the traits I listed above. On the other hand I strongly believe that someone can change your unhappy mood simply by smiling and saying hello, or even by writing you on FB. Even poking is kinda uplifting. Last thought: You have to put energy into a friendship to develop one. I am afraid I don’t put too much into FB friends because it sucks the time right out of my life.
I have encountered similar issues on FB. I have lost a family member on there because comments that were put on FB we misinterpreted by his girlfriend, this family member is my brother. People think you are being nasty sometimes because they take comments the wrong way whereas when you speak face to face they would know certain things that are said are a joke by your facial expressions or by the way you speak. I still use FB regularly but in my opinion, social network sites can be very damaging to peoples lives. I know, I have experienced it many times.
I was defriended twice, by a family member. The first time it happened I asked her why she defriended me. She said she was having trouble with her FB page & could not sign on to it. This was a lie, she didn’t defriend anyone else and kept posting on her page. (I could see her posts, from my other relatives pages, when they were signed on to FB). She then sent me a Friend Request to keep the peace. She then quietly defriended me, about a week later. I am offended and will not bother with her, if I ever see her.
Someone else, who was a good friend, defriended me for no reason. She interfered with an argument I was having with another person. I explained what the argument was bout. She chose to take sides. About two months later, she “poked” me and sent me a Friend Request. I clicked both things off.
I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to realize that “friends” is a relative term. It is a marketable label, though, that sounds more fun than “connections.” I don’t have a facebook and haven’t had one for more than a month. I find it fascinating that the whole world seems to be on it. Even businesses want you to “like them” on fb if you want to be entered in their contest, for example. I can’t wait until fb becomes obsolete or an old fad like myspace or jelly bracelets.
I agree with you Jones – I can’t wait for FB to be over, though I’m skeptical it ever will be. I’ve deactivated and reactivated my account so many times because I hate having it and yet I am addicted to using it.
I used to take it personally if someone defriended me but a while back I did a mass-defriending down to the people I actually keep in contact with and see in real life. So now, if I ever discover that someone has defriended me, I try to assume that they are doing the same thing I did.
No, I have never been defriended, and would be totally devastated if I was, since I apply the utmost of tact in my internet dealings with people. Also, I am careful to post private messages on FB if the topic is of a sensitive nature; so that others are not privy to the subject matter.
Basically all of my internet liasons are people that I know or have been friends with personally,so that’s why I would take it hard if I were defriended.
I related very much to the article, I’ve been defriended by people at work. Fine, you don’t know me anyways, and I’ve been tempted to defriend plenty of “friends” that are one facebook, because they’re not really friends anyways. I’m really surprised by people who have 400 or more friends? How on earth can you be friends with that many people. FB is popular but I don’t like it that much. You’re not alone, I’ve taken it personally too, but I eventually got over it.
FB is what folks do who have time on their hands and nobody to talk to IRL (in real life). It’s basically just the relationship equivalent of “junk food”, and just about as worthless.
I don’t know how many friends I have, nor whether anyone has dropped me. I think I have been dropped from some connections by FB itself, but I suppose they could have dropped me. There are a few people whose posts tend to rouse negative feelings in me, but I just hide their posts instead of dropping them. That way I can still go to their site if I want to catch up with them, but they can’t inadvertently ruin my day.
I solved the friend issue by having more than one account- ONE I play games on, the other I only add “friends” past/present that I WANT to know what is going on with them ( I actually BLOCKED my own sister because of the way she treats me).
I never look at the number of friends I have. I used to get a notification every time I lost a Twitter follower, but I cancelled that, too. What I don’t know can’t hurt my feelings.
I remember how many friends I have too. It sucks when they magically appear and disappear on a regular basis – mostly because some of these people deactivate and reactivate their accounts.
I have unfriended people who I’ve strongly disagreed with, and once in a while I do a purge of those people I don’t talk to, but that’s just about it.
It still bugs me when people unfriend me.
I think a lot of people blocked and defriended me because of rumors and lies about me, that were not even true. It was all third party nonsense. I will not substantiate myself to people like this. I thought it over, these people were never friends, if they did this.
I totally understand and I have de friended someone in a situation exactly like yours, a cousin of mine used the facebook to criticize me for posting too much because after a two weeks break I posted the pictures from my vacation trip. The only sad thing is that I haven’t spoken to this cousin again ever since. The boundaries between the real world and the Internet are thinner than we might consider.
Every person I have added on facebook I have met in real life at least once. That’s my rule.
I have to admit to being a bit of a curmudgeon about this — I was under the impression that you could actually limit access. So that you can allow in friends who are actually friends – as in – you would talk to them if you were ill, or they would call you for help – and you have actually had shared experiences where you both have learned something aboot one another’s strengths and weaknesses — then you should be upset if they part ways. If they are just people interested in your blog, it is a stretch to call them acquaintances. A second solution: turn off the computer. Go see someone.
With all due respect, I REALLY thought this was satire!
Seriously – The Jesus & Paul II bit?
That’s hilarious!
And this is SO funny:
“his photo scared the hell out of me. He was practically naked with tattoos all over, flexing his muscles. I don’t know… I just went with my gut there.”
and
“I have only de-friended one person. He is a relative, and I didn’t appreciate that he posted a message on my wall that he hates my blog, that I am over-dramatic and negative, and he can’t stand reading it.”
brilliant!
Thought I would come to the site and see what has been offered of late, found this post and accompanying thread and just have to ask people who have lived outside their homes, away from computer and other electronic screen devices for some sizeable period of time, what is a friend to you?
You’ll find out in moments of crisis or duress. And I doubt you’ll find out by just sitting in front of a screen, typing away.
Dumbing down the value of human contact is not just sad, but pathetic in the end. But, if this was a satire piece, isn’t a disclaimer due?
Yes, I’ve been defriended and, too, I’ve defriended.
I don’t mind being defriended – AT ALL…
For me, the matter is fairly simple and straightforward: if the Facebook enjoyment has turned to laborious work aka baby-sitting tedium, I recommend we go our separate ways… (we don’t have to do it in a mean-spirited way, though…)
Sure, I’ve been de-friended. Probably quite a few times but the only one I know of is by one of my ex girlfriends who quite recently seems to have removed me.
I got a bit surprised but the only reason I noticed is cause I visited her profile to see if she still lives in a town I was planning on visting. When I saw that we were no longer friends I took a look at her friend count and noticed that it had decreased drastically so obviously she had cleaned up her list and since we hadn’t talked for two years it didn’t feel strange at all.
Seriously taking facebook WAY to seriously. QQ less
I can relate. I’m a professional novelist and artist. And though I’ve had great success with my career and make my living that way, I too have been hurt by the lack of support or feedback about my creative efforts from family and close friends on facebook. It’s not as if I post about it all the time. I only occasionally mention my work or show a sample of my latest project.
When they’re silent, I think they just see me as a talentless hack of no worth or they don’t care. I don’t know which is more painful.
And, yes, suddenly being “unfriend” hurts too. You always wonder if it was something you said, did, or what.
I was the same way, feeling that I was much stronger before Facebook. I thought I’d overcome my insecurities long ago, especially the high school not fitting in feeling–that’s one place I never wanted to go again and never thought I would.
I rarely remove anyone as a friend and only for the most severe offense–like the guy who posted a photo of himself on the toilet.
While I’m on the subject, I think I’ll scream the next time I see a lame motivational saying on FB, stolen photos and art, a copy-and-paste-this to your wall notice for breast cancer or some other cause. And I think we all hate the poster who is out to impress and appears to be in love with himself.
I don’t take anything on facebook seriously. If someone says something I like, great. If they say something stupid or hurtful, I treat it as if I am reading their mind, and it’s a random thought that they aren’t even aware of having. I laugh it off, or I try to. I enjoyed your article.
FB was fun before, but now everyone’s afraid to be who they really are in fear of not being accepted. Don’t be sad when someone leaves be glad someone heard U. Say the things U want to say and make the points U want to make. That way U won’t care what they think. Everybody different that’s how it is suppose to be. not clones of one another. On the other hand if U wanna be a socialite say what U see others say to get likes(unrealistic behavior). I see it as a total waste of life.
I m soo paranoid that i even installed this unfriend extension script for safari/firefox so i can see who unfriended me. and that happens quite frequently. i mean i think i already lost about 30 ppl in that way. that s really a whole lot. and i always think about what i ve done wrong. that hurts me quite much.
what i ll never understand why other ppl like postings of ppl that just post lame crap which is sooooo boring… like i just ate noodles with fucking tomatoes or the new windows 8 made me whatever….
and when i post something more serious which rarely really rarely happens (Maybe 1 or 2 times per year) usually a few ppl reply or post sth about that.
nvm, my opinion is that fb stops ppl from being around in the social world that is really important for developing social competences and therefore fb hurts many ppl like me. i just can’t delete my fb account because of the need for the job studies and friends which live far away.
I thought this was a brilliant insight into the modern way of socialising! Im writing a essay for my german A level about ‘are our face book friends really our real friends’ and this quirky, cheeky outlook on the concept has definitley brightened my mood! sorry to hear about what your family member had to say about your blog, i think it’s brilliant, so thank you.