Categories: uncategorized
Date: 08 March 2010 07:02:42
I have had a Facebook cull, as people may or may not have noticed. Probably very few of the 200+ people I deleted as friends will even know who it is who has taken their number of friends down slightly. The reason for this trimming back has come out of some thinking I've had going on recently.
I have been in a situation where I have gotten fed up of people's inability to be honest with one another. For very good reasons a bunch of lovely people have decided it is kinder to be complete hypocrites over the years than actually be honest. There is one young woman who sticks out because she is generally more honest and I admire her greatly for this. I know there are degrees of honesty, but sometimes I really believe it is right to say to people, "no, I don't think you are right for this because" or "I personally don't think x,y or z but understand you and others do". Equally sometimes it is right to just be civil if you find somebody difficult rather than feigning friendship and then bitching about them.
As I was thinking / getting wound up about this two-faced attitude last night I took a look at my own life and the part I have played. I realised that I need to stop trying to get the splinter out of others eyes and get the log out of my own. I had alot of people who were friends on Facebook because, (i) I've met them once, (ii) I share some electronic sites with them but don't regularly interact with them, (iii) they were people I didn't really get on with but thought I should be friends with or (iv) they were interesting friends of friends I added but then had nothing to do with. Thus, I was in the situation where I had alot of people I could count as "friends" who weren't even really associates. I also had a bunch of people I was referring to as friends who were more people I sometimes shared spaces with. Additionally through status updates I was keeping up an almost voyeristic insight into peoples lives when actually I didn't really know them. For example last night I was able to explain why somebody was stressed as a result of having read a status update and thread when I don't really know this person.
So what have I done. Well, I've looked at who I keep on the following basis: (i) are they family?, (ii) are they close friends?, (ii) are they neighbours? (iii) are they people I work with in some form or another?, (iv) are they electronic friends but people I have/ have had meaningful interaction with? (iv) are they people I actually care about from the past and so want to keep up a link with? and (v) are they people who it may be useful to network with if my life heads in a particular direction? (Although after the last 24 hours I am thinking I've been stupid thinking about that direction). I've probably not done a total job, but I have managed to trim back my Facebook friends by about two thirds. Also I've thought about whether they actually use Facebook. We seem to keep alot of other people who don't use it on there as friends to keep our numbers up. Basically my thinking is it doesn't matter how many friends we have on facebook it is the quality of relationship we have with them that matters.