Since I joined Facebook, I've always been entertained by what some people have posted, photos that have been shared, and just getting in contact with friends from my past. In the past couple of weeks, I've had some interesting things happen among my Facebook 'friends', in reaction to which I've had a variety of responses. All in all, it's still entertaining, and yeah, some of it, just plain silly. First, a couple of things about my experience with FB.
Earlier this year, a friend told me about a seminar that NYU ran for incoming Freshman about what a friend is. The future students had been questioned about how many friends they had. When the university started getting responses from the kids, the responses were unreal - students were claiming to have friends totaling in the thousands. It didn't take too long for administrators to realize that the kids were referring to their Facebook friends, most of which were people that they hadn't even met. Apparently, NYU felt they needed to explain to the incoming youngsters what the definition of 'friend' was.
In my experience, I have had people that I've never met extend a friend request to me. I ignore all of them. I've also ignored requests from people from high school that never gave me the time of day when we actually could have met face to face. I've somewhat relaxed my standards for friend requests, and have accepted people that I've met once, although recently. This has led to issue number one.
The other day at work, I was running around the office a lot, and when I got back to my computer, I had an IM over gmail from someone I didn't recognize. I ignored it, figuring it was in error. When I did realize who it was, I was somewhat surprised - it was someone that I barely know, but had accepted his friend request on Facebook, so I guess he felt a certain familiarity. I don't IM with a lot of people, in fact I think I can count them on one hand. There are even fewer people with whom I will carry on an electronic conversation with during the day, especially when I'm at work. So I blocked him. The assumed closeness of Facebook can be disturbing.
Issue number two: defriending. Or is it unfriending? I use the two terms interchangeably, not knowing which is correct. Have you ever severed a Facebook friend? I've thought about it, there are definitely people from who I've accepted a request, and then wondered why. It could be because I haven't talked to them in years, but they found me and I didn't see the harm in accepting from them until they started sending me Farmville or Mafia Wars requests, or posted views that are in complete opposition to mine, like thinking Rush Limbaugh is The Man. That's not to say that I don't accept people into my life that have different opinions from mine on the issues of the day. However, if the only thing that we seem to have in common is the proximity of where our parents decided to live, I think I just may cut the cord.
Then there are the people who you were actually friends with, but have had a falling out with for whatever reason. Same with ex-boyfriends/girlfriends. I recently had a former friend drop me from her Facebook family. I've also had an ex drop me. The ex dropping me had a much more profound effect. The former friend, well, no big surprise.
The greatest revelation about FB lately has been the announcement and instant comments about life events. My sister had a baby last week, and the past four days has been a constant parade of photos from her husband, and congratulations from family and friends. Since my sister lives across the country, it's been a great way for the family (all of us on the East Coast) to share in their happiness. I won't be able to see her until mid-April, so this is a satisfying way of keeping up with what's going on in California.
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