Friends and Shades of Gray

This past weekend I experienced something new. I was de-friended by someone on facebook.

Let me start by clarifying how I define 'friends' on facebook: If I have accepted your friend request (you asked me)on facebook, there is a 70% chance that I do not actually consider you a friend. Since there is only one category I cannot split hairs - there is only black and white. Most of the non-friend 'friends' are individuals who would be better categorized as acquaintances. They are good people who I have no problem sharing any posts, pictures and contact info I chose to put on facebook. If I requested you as a friend, there is a 100% chance that I consider you a friend - I do not believe in friending people just so you can have more fiends. My hope in writing this is not to cause any paranoia among my facebook friends or to come off as condescending or arrogant. I am CERTAIN that there are individual that I have friended who hit the 'Accept' button simply because it was easier in their minds to go with the flow rather than worry about what that person would think of them if they ignored it. This is how facebook works and why it keeps people interested and engaged - the net controls you sometimes rather than the other way round (that is a whole other blog).

So, getting back to my de-friending. Since this is the first time it has happened so far (there may be more if anyone reads this blog), I was not certain how it would go. First off, there were no bells and whistles, no alert via email, no flashing box when you log in. The only way I knew was that I looked at this individuals post on Friday afternoon and when I went to check it out again on Saturday he was not in my friends list. Now, I know what you are asking - which category of 'friend' was he to begin with. He was in the acquaintance category, subcategory of former work colleague. His last post mentioned that he was having a change at his current work and since we work in the same field (as small one at that), I suspect that he chose this as a moment to cut ties so I could/would not comment on this change or pass on what was happening to others in the industry (this brings me to a whole other potential blog entry - where to draw the line on postings if you have co-workers as facebook friends). Reality is that while I found his post of interest, I had no plans to comment on his situation other than a potential 'chin up' type comment. Since we had not commented or communicated on facebook in a few months, I thought that even this might be viewed as opportunistic, hence why I did not comment upon first reading his update.

OK, so what is the take home message here? For me, the take home message is that everyone wants to be accepted and feel important (I hope we can all agree on that), and when you are 'defriended' your first feeling will most likely be a twinge of hurt. Reality is, if he felt that strongly about closing off that access to his life then he has me categorized lower on his own scale than I have him on mine. I am OK with this. I do wish him the best and hope that it all works out.

This has made me consider evaluating my facebook friends list and deciding if I should trim it a bit. If I did, should I message the defriendees (did I just make up a word?) prior to the defriending? If I was planning to defriend you, would you like to know or would you rather find out by happenstance? Would you try to talk me out of it or would you quietly accept my choice? Of course it all depends on what shade of gray I am in your corner of the black and white facebook universe.