My Facebook account hit 1,000 friends over the weekend, so I thought it was time to downsize and keep only the ones I actually knew. I ended up only unfriending 13. Couldn't bear to lose more, but I wish I had the guts to remove non-friends.
What counts as a friend? Is it someone you must have met personally? No. There are people I have never met face-to-face who I consider good friends.
Is it someone you must have met more than once? No. Sometimes you get to know a person that one time as well as you do some other acquaintance over a lifetime.
And then there are people you are embarrassed to delete because you will run into them again. Distant relatives, for example. (Sorry, distant relatives.)
Now I don't feel like accepting friend requests anymore.
We all have the right to be selective. So go on, unfriend me if I don't mean anything to you. It's totally ok.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI think the main problem is that there is no way to uncheck the feature that keeps suggesting your name to people to be your friend. Many people have complained about that.
Also Facebook changes its policy without warning users well, plus many other issues.
Also, the segmentation of contacts into different categories -work, close friends etc. is cumbersome.
I have a very mixed relationship with Facebook or Twitter. Firstly, there is the question you posed about "do I really know the people I am connected to?"
ReplyDeleteYou also said "meaning something to you". Now, for me, that is the trick. Meaning something.
Most of my Facebook friends sure mean Something, but they hardly mean the same. By that I mean that it is hard for me to focus on the different groups of friends on there, and to communicate to them in a way which doesn't make me feel like I am spamming the others.
For instance, right now I am going through a process where I am figuring out more about my ancestors - going back to the 1500s. So I write a bit about genealogy. But I feel that my Filipino friends, my colleagues at work, my videoblogging/social media friends - to them, this is rather irrelevant.
Now, you may say, "write a bit for each group then, no problem" to which I respond that this is a fair point, but I still can't help feeling that I can't have a Proper relationship with the different groups on facebook.
I actually end up using the private messaging the most, not 'poke', or write on walls/pictures.
And I agree with P about the structural problems of Facebook. The privacy issues are quite important - and I must admit sometimes that I am a bit freaked out about the thought of some corporation datamining all my relationships from Facebook...
dear P and Raymond,
ReplyDeleteit's so good to hear your thoughts. i also received some comments on facebook from friends, but not quite like yours. (mainly friends afraid i'd unfriend them!)
it's inevitable that facebook is a test case for privacy and sharing online. it's good that we raise the concerns now and learn from them. the sooner the better. then eventually, the web and its users will be savvy and take these issues into consideration.
as a general rule, this still holds: don't post anything you don't want your grandparents to see.
there's an infographic that i saw a contact post on google buzz: a venn diagram of the web and privacy. the two circles do not overlap.
I understand what you mean. Sometimes, I don't know whether to click confirm or just leave the request there. In my head, "do you really want to know what's happening in my life now? Why?"
ReplyDeletea facebook connection is good to have in case you lose your phone or get into an emergency situation where you need a quick response from a particular kind of person. but then that's too utilitarian, no? good to hear from you, macy! haven't been to summit for a while. no more time to raket. :)
ReplyDelete