Why

Which Facebook Friends Should I Remove?

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Nov 6 2010 update:

This article just became much more relevant after Facebook introduced the Facebook Friendship Page feature on Oct 29, 2010.

Most people on Facebook have far more Facebook Friends than friends they have in real life. It is for social networking, after all, not deep friendships. However, every one of those Facebook friends is watching you, in a way, with Facebook’s notifications and updating system. How many stories have you heard about people caught cheating on relationships, lying for jobs or scholarships, and the like, because of something they did on Facebook that was found out by someone else? Even some misunderstandings of your actions and/or comments can be a lot of nuisance. These public mistakes, visible to all your Facebook Friends, are so common now you might even know someone who has been subject to it! But it’s not that a person did something wrong on Facebook that was the problem. It was that it got picked up by someone else who was probably on their Facebook friends’ list. Privacy settings can’t protect against Facebook friends. Well, they can, but if you have settings against Facebook friends, you should just remove them.

Having a Facebook Friends list closer to your real friends list means you have to worry less about who might get you in trouble. You can also misbehave a little bit more without worrying much about the consequences. Don’t kid yourself if you don’t think there are potential consequences. You’ll also waste less time screening through notifications looking for updates by those you really care about in life.

Keeping your Facebook Friends list up to date is the solution to many of the potential problems previously listed. Keeping your Facebook Friends list up to date means removing people from time to time, not just adding them. It is a judgmental act to remove Facebook friends, but seriously, if you made a wrong call, it’s just Facebook friendships. If you’re real friends to any extent in life, they’ll forgive you and you can be Facebook friends again.

So which Facebook friends should you remove? Well, you choose your own criteria. But here are a few I have found useful… in no particular order, and sometimes in combination as they are not absolute.

Do I feel like removing them or care enough to keep them?

I trust my feelings on this one. If I don’t remove them on gut reaction alone, I sometimes override that with other “thinking” criteria below.

Do I know who they are right away?

Some people’s Facebook Friends lists are so large they can really answer “no” to this question for some on their list. “Facebook whales”, or people with over 1000 Facebook friends, may find this criteria interesting to try. If I can’t remember someone on my Facebook Friends list to the extent I know them right away, I chuck them.

Would they remember who I am?

Facebook whales are prime candidates to be tossed under this criteria. It only takes knowing a few hundred people’s names for someone to seem like they remember everybody, but they really don’t. This criteria is a little hard for people to answer “no” to, because it makes them seem so unimportant to someone else. I just suck it up, so if I have any doubt a Facebook Friend might know who I am, I toss them.

Can I name 3 specific things about them not recently on their updates?

Knowing who someone is, is not exactly a deep criteria. If I barely know who a person is on my Facebook Friends list, I often remove them unless I know they will probably be a useful contact for me in the future. These are the people I often added because they might be a useful contact to me in the future, in the first place. I’m not very discerning to add Facebook friends, but I am to remove them.

Do I hide their status updates or block them on my privacy settings?

This one isn’t absolute for me, but I have eliminated Facebook friends on it. With some people, they’re real friends with annoying habits I put up with cause we’re friends. What people put up with in any type of relationship is more than what they’d put up with strangers due to the bond of the relationship. So I hide their statuses but keep them as Facebook Friends. However, if I’m not real friends to some extent, and am annoyed by their status updates, I tend to remove them. I can find other ways to contact them if I really need to. Certainly, if I ever considered blocking people to any extent with my privacy settings, I remove them.

Have I had any contact with them “lately” (like maybe a year or more)?

If I haven’t had any contact with a person in over a year, I usually remove them. Contact doesn’t mean they have to initiate the contact, but that they should respond to contact I have with them. Some people are so bad they don’t do that, in which case, no need to keep them. I can still be friends if we only ever communicate in real life, but there’s no need to have them snoop on me. We can become Facebook friends again later if they appear in my life again. Technical problems I can’t understand is a good way to explain what “happened” to our previous Facebook friendships.

Do they update their Facebook profile?

The main reason I use Facebook was to be in touch with the lives of people. If they don’t update, that defeats this purpose. We likely wouldn’t have had much contact, either, in which case, off they go!

Do I have them to avoid awkwardness?

There are times when I add people to avoid awkwardness, like partners of female friends. After a while, if I don’t develop any type of friendship with those partners, I remove them. They’ll have had their “check-in” time to make sure I’m not after their girlfriends or spouse. I also know I’m not doing that so the partner’s “jealousy” becomes his problem, not mine.

Those are the criteria I have so far. I may have more in the future and will add if so. If you have suggestions, please do share.

Other Facebook issue posts on my site:

The Prejudices and Privacy Perils of Facebook Quizzes

How to Get Rid of Your Facebook Past

25 Things For Facebook You Can’t Steal My ID With

25 Things You Gave on Facebook to Help Get Your ID Stolen

Una Guía de Netiqueta Práctica para Facebook

 

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 7.2

The Food Miles Myth – Eat Local for the Economy, Not the Environment

Digital Citizen 4 Comments

Food miles is a nice concept for awareness, but a meaningless and impractical ideal to believe in for eating local. Eat local for the economy, not the environment. It doesn’t sound as “romantic”, to idealize something for money rather than for the Earth. However, you’re likely idealizing something you wouldn’t be able to prove to be true.

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Take Dr Helen Fisher’s Why Him/Why Her Personality Test for Love

Digital Citizen 34 Comments
Helen Fisher

Dr Helen Fisher

I have converted the scientific test from Dr Helen Fisher‘s absolutely fascinating book, Why Him? Why Her? Finding Real Love by Understanding Your Personality Type, into a text format you can use in any place where you can edit text, whether a word processor or Facebook Note. This very scientific test will give you a lot of insight into the nature of your personality, who you fall for and why, and you can decide whether that’s what you’re looking for because wanting and doing aren’t necessarily the same thing. While designed to be used for singles looking for love, I’m sure it would be just as interesting for couples to do it rather than just singles. Dr Fisher has tested outcomes against existing couples to verify the theory. I would bet the outcomes couples get would make for an interesting discussion. That’s discussion, not argument!

To get that insight, you’ll need to do Dr Fisher’s test first, then click here to get an interpretation of results. This test is also the core test used on the very successful match-making site, Chemistry.com, that has been the buzz of that scene for a few years now with over 7 million people tested.

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Emoticons and Smileys with Descriptions Facebook Picture Tagging Memes

Digital Citizen 12 Comments

I did not create these emoticon Facebook tagging memes, and I do not know who did to link them to the source. However, I did touch up some of them to optimize them in size for Facebook, and a few I found as graphics searching for pictures that could be used for Facebook tagging. If you like descriptions with your emoticon and smiley memes, try the Emoticons & Smileys without Descriptions post.

To use any of these for your Facebook tagging fun:

  • Click on the picture to get it at full size.
  • Right click on that picture and save to your computer.
  • Upload it to your Facebook profile.
  • Tag your friends!

Please click here for a complete list of over 100 Facebook picture tagging memes on this site with which you can use for fun with your friends.