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Monday, September 28, 2009

Un-Friending

My cousin just passed on a very 21st century example of passive aggressive behavior: un-friending people on Facebook, without telling them.

Have you done it? Please share...

5 comments:

  1. I have actually gotten un-friended by somebody before for no apparent reason I could think of occasionally. I have also un-friended somebody on Monday this week actually because I no longer wanted to associate with this particular person. He was actually the one who was being passive aggressive by blocking me on AOL Instant Messenger first. I figured it made no sense for me to stay friends with him on Facebook if he has no desire to talk to me to begin with anymore. Sometimes the saying, "out of the sight, out of the mind" is completely true I believe. This person is actually my recent ex-boyfriend who I had broken up with two weeks ago and I feel like because there is no visible ways that reminds me of him, I got over him even quicker.

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  2. I completely understand this situation, and although it is passive aggressive, I do it QUITE often. I just feel too bad when rejecting someone that I'll add them, and then delete them after it's been 'enough' time. I'm hoping they won't ever notice that I deleted them. I sometimes find it less hurtful to just leave the friend request pending. That way they were neither accepted or denied. If I'm really annoyed by some people, I'll even completely block them! As far as they're concerned, I don't even have a facebook page =)

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  3. I have unfriended people who annoy me on yahoo messenger and other places where I have a friend list. It's the funniest thing when someone who annoys me will write me out of the blue like 6 months after I unfriend them and I'm like oh you must have gotten deleted off of my page.

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  4. Unfriending people in facebook is extremely common, and often effective, because facebook doesn't give you any sort of notice that you have been unfriended. One might go months before they realize that someone has unfriended them, and when they do, so much time has passed that they do not pursue it. It is also easy to do because if confronted, the person who did it can say it was an accident and they meant to click to unfriend somebody else on their list who was close in alphabetical order.

    I was unfriended by someone on facebook, and at first I was very unsure of why that happened. She was just an acquaintance from school and was never someone I was very close with, so I couldn't imagine why she would unfriend me because I had so little contact with her in the first place and therefore didn't understand how I could possibly offend her. I did eventually ask her why she did it, and she told me that it was because she didn't like my postings (on my own page, mind you) about my support for abortion rights. I told her that I wasn't going to stop advocating for my beliefs, and so she never re-friended me, which is fine. It's just a bit awkward now when I see her walking around campus....

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  5. My perception is that many Facebook friends are not real friends to begin with but I guess it can still be a bit stinging to be rejected by someone you don't know well - kind of a "I see who you are and don't want to become a real friend with you." Realistically it just is probably information overload on the homepage for someone you don't have a real relationship with. I guess it's one of those new situations where the etiquette will have to be figured out.

    My daughter recently "unfriended" someone whose posts had reached a significant level of offense. They were casual acquaintances from several years ago. Even though this person had many friends, and Facebook does not notify you when someone removes you as a friend, this person almost immediately noticed he had been removed and promptly sent my daughter another friend request which she accepted. Perhaps a bit more passive than passive aggressive. Her message may have been received though because the friend toned down his posts to a more acceptable level.

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