I mean, lets be real. When you unfriend someone for no apparent reason, you're sending a pretty harsh message to that person. Deleting people from social media is the modern way to tell people that you don't want them in your life. In my opinion, the cost of maintaining a Facebook friendship is pretty low and if you make a conscious decision to push a button to get rid of someone, it can be pretty puzzling to a person who always assumed you were on a friendly basis. I have to wonder, why wouldn't you just "unfriend" me to my face? Too awkward?
The other day, my sister came stomping in the house and was all like, "Do you know (this person we know) Jen unfriended us on Facebook?"
I was like, "Huh?"
And she was like, "Yup! She unfriended me and you and Ty and Alex! Can you believe that?? That is SO RUDE."
And I was like, "Well maybe she deactivated her account or something." Because really, this person is a local Mom who grew up with my husband, someone whose daughter is friends with mine and my sister Ali's kids. I literally speak to her every time I have to call the place that she works. I'm friendly. I mean, clearly we aren't BFF's or anything. But in my defense, I'm not BFF's with anyone. We all know that I'm socially uncool. But its like, did we do something? Did we mass-offend her with something we did or said? How could she hate us all in one fell swoop?
I'm pretty low key. I'm not a Facebook over-sharer. In fact, I'm not a big Facebook person in general. I pretty rarely post, maybe hop on every day or two to see what's happening, comment here and there and maybe wish people a happy birthday. I don't have political rants or aggressively comment on people's posts. I'm a pretty private person, so constantly posting updates and pictures about my life is something that I don't do. I definitely don't take Facebook too seriously. Obviously, different people have different reasons for using Facebook- and obviously her Facebook is HER Facebook to be friends with whomever she chooses to be friends with, but seriously, deleting someone from your social media is definitely sending a strong message. And the message "I don't want to be your friend," comes through pretty loud and clear.
Then Ali was like, "No, I saw she changed her name on Facebook, like she was being all incognito or something."
So huh. That's pretty lame.
What sucks is, I really do see this person enough for it to be freaking awkward. I can't help it, I'm offended! Maybe before unfriending someone, you should post a generic letter of intent, so you don't take anyone by surprise and unnecessarily hurt feelings. You have to know that you're guaranteed to run into them on the sidelines of your kid's field hockey game or something and have one of those awkward "I unfriended you because you're annoying and I know that you know you've been unfriended, but we just won't mention it and we'll continue to pretend that we're friendly" types of uncomfortable run-ins. And let's face it, nobody like those kind of run-ins.
Way back in the beginning of Facebook, it was like you friended everyone from the person who takes your order at the pizza place, to that one guy you hung out with at a college rager once, 25 years ago. I get that these days people might be all like, "I just want to be friends with people that I actually know and like." That definitely makes sense. And chances are, the random that you accepted as a friend two years ago probably wont even notice if you unfriend them.
But as far as local people that you don't necessarily dislike and are bound to run into often enough to make it uncomfortable? Like, why not just put them in a category of like, "people that I'm not tight with." In doing that, you can keep most things private from them, you can set it so they don't see your posts, or whatever. If you do that, they're none the wiser, and they're not all offended and confused.
ANYway, it really isn't worth getting bent out of shape about. It's Facebook. But next time I see her, I suppose I'll keep my distance.
Have you ever been randomly unfriended by someone you thought you were cool with?
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