Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Facebook- to friend or to unfriend and to care or not care about it

I am slightly addicted to the ol' FB. I spend lots of time reading posts and making comments and posting stuff of my own. And I notice when someone's name from my friends list doesn't show up as a link when I attempt to tag them. This happened to me last week and I have been thinking about it off and on for the past couple of days.

I had a mysterious unfriending of/by this person (who I will refer to as Moody McMeany) a couple years ago after some uncomfortable in-person interactions and back then, by the time I realized we weren't FB friends anymore, I wasn't sure who unfriended who (this was before you could stay friends with someone but hide them from your feed). After some hemming and hawing about it, I decided to send a new friend request and it was accepted. We had been friends since then until my surprise last week.

This time, I am absolutely positive Moody McMeany unfriended me. And I have to admit, my feelings were a bit hurt.  I also have to admit that I have been trying to make myself not care. But I feel like the person who thinks everything is fine until you don't get an invitation to the birthday party everyone else was invited to. It stings, even if you may not have wanted to go to the party. I have been friendly with Moody and for the most part, we got along fine. Apparently, this wasn't enough to stay friends; no invitation for me.

 Moody obviously had a reason to not want to be friends with me anymore (unless this was an accidental unfriending, which I doubt).  I don't know what I did- Moody is still friends with many of the people we have as mutual friends. Maybe Moody doesn't like my religious or political post/shares. Maybe my personality rubs the wrong way. Maybe I did something in real life that caused the unfriending. Maybe the last friend request was accepted out of guilt. I truly don't and likely won't ever know and I really don't care. At this point, it would only be a satisfaction of curiosity. And when I really think about this person and how they have treated other people who are both my real life friends and FB friends, I KNOW that I do not want or need to be friends with Moody McMeany on Facebook or in real life. One of my dad's life mottoes is, "Don't surround yourself with vexatious people." Why would I want to be friends with someone I have dubbed  McMeany? I wouldn't.

Obviously, we have all unfriended people- we didn't like them anymore, we didn't know them very well, we were tired of incessant posts about whatever (politics, religion, too many puppy and angel pictures or videos, ranting about ranting, they don't post enough or ever). I have done it many times and I guarantee it has been done by people to me. Now, though, there is the option to hide or unsubscribe without unfriending and I have done this more lately. I still want to be FB, and possibly, real life friends with these people but don't want to see every post they make. I can check in when I want and see what I want. I don't have to unfriend them and potentially open a can of worms I may not want to try to close. Obviously, I will unfriend someone if they insult or offend me, but that, for me, would be an unlikely occurrence. In other words, it would take a pretty big altercation/fight/disagreement either on FB or in person for me to unfriend someone. I guess whatever I did to Moody McMeany was pretty bad.

In the end, I really don't care that MM and I aren't FB friends anymore. I had limited contact in real life and we were never actual friends. I was just surprised when I wasn't able to tag and went through the typical "what did I do?" scenarios in my head. In the big scheme of things, it doesn't matter what I did or didn't do to MM; if Facebook didn't exist, I wouldn't be in contact with most of the people who are my online friends. The people who truly matter would be my friends regardless of social networking. I think I'll become addicted to them instead.