Have a look at your friends list on your social media platforms. I am willing to bet MOST of you will find a strange collection of people there. People you vaguely remember speaking to at a cousin’s wedding, friends you used to be friendly with in primary school, and probably quite a few friends from high school that you were actually never friends with. Like, probably never even spoke to?
I don’t know about you, but for me, many of these people I still don’t actually speak to, or even interact with. I don’t recall friend requesting them and I am unsure why they ever friend requested me when we are not friends, and we never were? It’s not lost on me the obvious solution is to unfriend these people and move on with my life.
I am certain they would not notice or care. I don’t follow them, and I am sure they don’t follow me either. I don’t like their statuses or pictures and they don’t like mine. I don’t count my friends via social media, yet, for some inexplicable reason, I have not taken the step to unfriend them. I suppose, it feels unnecessarily unfriendly as an action, because there is only the unfriend option. But I am not really unfriending them on the basis that we were never friends in the first place.
For younger folks, this may seem strange, I don’t know, but I have to assume these platforms were new when we joined them and we got over excited adding any name we even remotely recognised. Collecting friends, so to speak, wanting a peak at what had become of everyone we went to school with and wondering who was still friends with who. Not to mention to see the random connections that may now exist between yourselves and themselves through an extended network.
But over a decade later, why are these people still there and what is the value in keeping them there? Some are at least going through some stuff, and sharing tips, motivational quotes and other things of interest or value. Others, obviously I seem to keep tabs on from afar. Logging in recently I was shocked to see one of them was “in a relationship” with someone new, when I believed she was happily married to someone else. Clicking on her profile for further investigation showed nothing, but his was more interesting! Until I caught myself and reminded myself it is none of my business what has happened between them. It feels a bit wrong that I should even know at all. I was really just being nosy. Their life drama should not be my entertainment.
I wrote a post pertaining to orbiting recently. Where someone in your life is no longer friendly or engaging with you in reality, however still interacts with you distantly via social media. I am unsure if these friends that never were friends fall into that category? Are we orbiting each other? It seems unlikely as I never like or comment on anything of theirs, and the sentiment is reciprocated. However, while there is no real reason for them to be there, it feels like there is also no real reason for them not to be there, you know? I don’t know if that is because our social media connection has tricked my brain into thinking that we are in fact friends, or that we were at some stage in the past, or if it is because social media has become the official friendship breakup status?
Many people I know consider a social media unfriending to be the final straw. Severing that life support connection once and for all, with no hope of return. Unfriending a contact has become a statement piece, intended to be loud and painful. So maybe that association is why I have trouble disconnecting from people who don’t need to be there but haven’t actually slighted me in any way!
It’s not particularly a problem for me, in that I don’t post much myself, and things I do post are usually not especially personal/private anyway. But I do admit that I never think about if these people would see my post, and if I am comfortable with it. I am sure they also don’t, especially when I see personal posts like mentioned above and I feel a bit awkward about it because it isn’t my business. It isn’t limited to just old school or work connections either, but also to casual acquaintances that perhaps I hoped would become friends but didn’t, or people I see regularly in that we travel in the same circles but never actually really speak?
Or maybe it really is a numbers game? As I tend to only have 5 close friends, 10 external friends and the rest family, maybe I just don’t want to see that small number reflected back to me? But why? They are the people I am aiming at when I post anything, the people I want to tell. Does it matter if the number is 12, or 120 or 1200? Has our social success and status become just another facade to keep up with?
I think it is probably time to get real and get rid of quite a few of these people. Not because I dislike them, but because we aren’t friends. I don’t need to do a dramatic post about the “culling” that I see many people do, because the people I would cut are highly unlikely to notice my absence anyway. And that is probably the biggest indicator of why they don’t belong there.
Maybe that is why an unfriend stings so much? You are willing to share your life with Joe Bloggs from the corner store, but you and I are officially through? How did he earn status when he never even spoke to you and I was a significant person in your life?! Don’t get me wrong, if we are no longer friends, I don’t want to see your stuff anyway, but it is an uncomfortable double standard.
If social media has become the cornerstone of friendships, then it should represent the people with whom we are actually friends. I certainly don’t have 100 friends in life, so mine is inaccurate and I don’t mind saying so. The question is will I change it, even if I think I should? Will you?
❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx
