I mentioned in the previous post the cathartic experience of defriending people who, in retrospect, didn’t know me well enough to realize I didn’t want to partake in their online farming and fishing fantasy world, so we weren’t really friends in the first place. It feels nice knowing I’ll never get another invite to something I’m not interested in again. In fact, I kinda want to unfriend more people! If this is the last blog of mine you ever see posted on your newsfeed…well…you’ll know why! :)

How do we really define “Facebook Friend?”  How do we determine if someone is worthy? Look at how many people we are “friends” with on facebook. I think have over a thousand. Sometimes people come up in my newsfeed, and I have to look at who our mutual friends are to figure out how the heck I met you in the first place. Or a girl has a different last name, because she got married, but I didn’t even know that she’d gotten married, because its so long since we’ve talked. Or finding out people from high school have three kids. Or moved to the East Coast. Through a status update. On my iphone during a meeting I’m bored in. Is that friendship? No way Jose. But should I delete you? I dont know. Do you remember me more than I remember you? Will I run into you at Safeway or the gym one day and feel terrible? Will you bring it up? Will you tp my house? will you notice if I unfriend you?

I know some people, one girl from high school in particular, who I think tries to meet people in order to collect facebook friends. There is no way she is in constant communication with all 2,000 + people she claims as her FB posse. I think its more of a self-promotion, self-marketing, I might want to use you for a business networking contact kind of thing.

So this raises two questions:

What makes someone worthy of a friend request on facebook?

When is someone no longer a facebook friend?