Like most people on Facebook, I have more Facebook friends than are really “friends”, even in the loosest sense of the word to mean a passing acquaintance. Despite this lack of any real sense of a relationship with some people, they get pissed off if you unfriend them. The egonomy is alive and well despite what the economy might be doing!
Instead of unfriending people en masse this year in batches, what I will do is unfriend them one or two at a time any time I accept a new Facebook friend request, with them not knowing each other. These criteria will minimize chances of being noticed, including having a randomness factor since I won’t know when I will new Friend Requests I will want to accept. I will just decline ones of people I don’t know, of course, or feel really sure there is no point of adding them.
I will also start filtering them out of my post privacy long before that so it would seem like I’m just not posting much. That will probably include some mutual friends with whom I don’t have much of a real friendship with, either. Again, this is to minimize chances of being noticed. I been putting on a bunch on a list a few at a time this year as I thought about it, or as their newsfeed items came up that I didn’t care for, and haven’t cared for, in a long time. That’s how I know I really have no value for them, when their newsfeed item is even a waste of my time never mind being at least of value to me in showing me stuff I want to know even if there’s nothing else between us for a friendship.
So what if they or someone notices?
Two things.
First, if they didn’t really mean much to me, there’s no reason they should start meaning much to me now.
Second, if it meant that much to anybody that I took such an action to unfriend someone who had no real relationship to me other than on Facebook, that they want to take action to me on it, like unfriending me, then all the better they help me in the cause! That’s not nearly enough of a criteria for any friend in the least genuine sense of the word to break up a friendship, so it would only validate to me that person who took action wasn’t worth keeping.
It all works out in the end. And if I get a reputation for being Facebook unfriendly, well, that should stop people from adding me for padding their ego… to have more Facebook friends, not that I think I’m a prize as a Facebook friend to anybody. MY egonomy is undergoing a depression, if you will, lol.
A bonus is that with more friends I can trust, I can be freer to post things I want without worry for judgment, backlash and such. 🙂
Fewer Facebook friends by end of year?
If you only unfriend one Facebook friend for every new friend request, you won’t end the year with fewer Facebook friends. If you unfriend more than one every once in a while, though, you will. Set one or the other as your indicator of success if you take on this philosophy. Real goals needs solid indicators to identify success. You can also count how few times your actions drew backlash as a quality indicator of how well, or not, you did this, rather than just an end of the year friends count.
Digital Citizen 