Because they might not be checking their facebook account. When unfriending them, I would also send them a message asking “do you still want to get my facebook updates?” I’m not going to remove my brother if he fails to comment on something, but I’m betting that 80% or more of the people out there have friends on Facebook who really don’t care about their news updates, and haven’t removed themselves out of apathy or fear of seeming rude.
I had the same thought when people were so shocked that the OP would want to unfriend people. Being unfriended is not the end of the world. If you don’t have time to read someone’s updates, then you probably have too many friends on Facebook and need to prune down your list. No need to start crying about it - if you really want to see the person’s updates, you can ask to be their friend again.
Like I said before, if I were in the OP’s situation looking to cut down on the number of friends in Facebook, I would unfriend them and at the same time send them a message saying “I’m cutting down my list, if you want to keep on getting my updates send me a message or friend me again.” Or better yet, divide your Facebook friends into lists, and when you post messages, make sure they go to the appropriate list. I have several lists (family, close friends, work colleagues, special interest, people from church, etc.) and when I post a message I only send it to one (or a few) of those lists.
The biggest complaint about Facebook that I read (besides privacy issues) is that you have to wade through too many postings that are boring or you don’t care about. Cutting down on the crap is a good thing. And if people aren’t really that interested in your private life, there is no need to keep them updated on your day-to-day doings - this also touches on the privacy issue.
I find it spectacularly, what? funny? Apt? Ironic? That a guy whose rant consisted of people on Facebook not bothering to even respond to his posts has not yet responded to our posts in three days. What’s the matter Cubsfan? Life too busy to properly use a message board? HOW DARE YOU!
I guess this just makes no sense to me. The first thing you wrote just smacks of passive aggressiveness.
If you do not care about seeing their updates, then sure, unfriend them. But don’t try to say, “oh, I’m unfriending you because obviously I’m a huge burden on your update list, since you never comment on any of my statuses. I’m doing this out of concern for you!” If they don’t want to see your updates, they’ll unfriend you themselves. Wild idea, I know.
And duh, of course being unfriended isn’t the end of the world. [sarcasm ] I know I sure shed a tear when this one old high school classmate unfriended me after I basically said her moronic anti Haiti status update was… moronic.* [/ sarcasm] Thing is, the whole, “I’m unfriending you because you never comment on my updates” is not for their sake, which you tried to claim it was. It’s passive aggressiveness. If I saw that someone unfriended me because of that, I’d roll my eyes because I don’t need to deal with that bullshit.
I’ve noticed that “old people” always say “young people” take facebook too seriously and in my experience, it’s the “old people” who end up tripping out over it.
It was one of those “repost this if you (really care blahblah)” things that said how it’s horrific how people care about Haitian earthquake victims when there’s more suffering in the US. Say what?
Thanks for assuming that everyone uses FB the same way you do. I generally don’t give a good god-damn about keeping current with people’s status updates; if I did, I’d get Twitter. For me, FB is (a) a massive address book and (b) for coordinating larger events.
I usually only unfriend people on facebook when they try converting me or posting significant amounts of religious stuff or if I’ve decided that I never want to see them again. When we had our baby in November, about 20 out of the 100-odd friends I have commented or liked the announcement, and when we posted photos, even fewer commented or liked them. I wasn’t offended - I just assumed everyone had better things to do than check out my wall on facebook.
Oh, and Suse, for what it’s worth, my sister created an e-mail account for my son. When he was two. When I asked her why, she said she just thought it’d be fun. I wouldn’t be surprised if she created a FB page for him, too, and possibly my 7 month old. People are very, very strange.
Really? Thank you! Passive aggressiveness gets a bad rap. One of my heros, Gandhi, accomplished great things using passive-aggressive methods.
And lots of people will be too lazy to unfriend themselves. I’m not doing this for your benefit, I’m doing it for mine. You don’t have a right to know my personal stuff if I don’t want to share it with you. It’s hard enough to safeguard my privacy in the days of the internet, without me being worried about offending people who are my friends on facebook. It’s a good idea to minimize exposure to your personal business.
You misunderstand me. I never claimed it was for their sake. What I was trying to demonstrate is that, if I do unfriend those people not interested in my postings, I’m not doing them any harm. As a matter of fact, I would say I’m doing them a favour. But my main purpose is not to do my ex-friends a favour - it’s to minimize how much of my private stuff is made known to other people.
It didn’t occur to me that people would use Facebook as an address book. In any case, I will respectfully point out that if you are just a casual acquaintance of mine, it’s not really my responsibility to help facilitate the way you choose to use Facebook. If you are someone that I would call a friend IRL, then I would let you know I’m unfriending you and for what reason, you could let me know “you’re destroying my facebook rolodex system!”, and I would add you back as a friend, but put you in a list where you don’t get any status updates from me. Then we would both be happy!
Holy crap. Quite a pile on here. Almost didn’t check back to this thread. I tend to start them and forget about them.
I’m not going to get into a back and forth over why I feel the way I do. I’ll just say that I don’t get offended when someone who I never see posting anything at all on FB (my gramp, a few of my friends etc…) doesn’t give me a thumbs up for the birth of my baby but it certainly DOES raise an eyebrow when there are people who are continually posting “Can’t wait for work to end” or “Just had the best burrito” throughout the day EVERY day can’t be bothered to acknowledge something important in my life with a LIKE or “Congrats” because it is TRULY the LEAST they can do. This is why I made a point of specifying ACTIVE FBers in my OP. I know everyone doesn’t get on everyday.
If my birth announcement is sandwiched between your morning “The Metro sucks today” and afternoon “Can’t wait for work to be over” and the 2 other times that week that I post an update (Baby and mom are home and doing fine, etc…) and you are still posting away with “The new shoes hurt my feet” and “Go Vikings!” and you still can’t find the time or gather up enough interest to acknowledge the event then you probably don’t need to know about it in the first place so DELETE. I really don’t give a shit what the SDMB thinks of this position. I was more interested in what makes YOU unfriend someone which is why I asked the question.
Some holier-than-thou motherfuckers here which is ironic seeing as such as large percentage of the SDMB are self proclaimed anti-social/socially awkward folks to begin with.
Cubsfan, I’m going out on a limb here but I’m pretty certain the people you are about to defriend won’t care even a little bit about no longer having you as their ‘friend’.
But, hey, congratulations on the new addition to the family!
Holy cow! You’re a guy! I was sure it was the post-natal hormones talking! LOL! Okay, so do what you want. What difference would it make to them anyway?
Things that would make me unfriend someone on Facebook:
They are abusive to me or a friend of mine either on Facebook or in real life
I have had a real life falling out with them
They were someone I added as a friend, but have had no meaningful relationship with them since (e.g. a friend of a friend I met at a BBQ and hit it off with, but we’ve never socialised together again)
My thought on your OP: Facebook uses the word ‘friend’ differently to how I see ‘friends’ in the real world. A friend is someone I’d phone up to say ‘Hey, we’ve had our baby, everyone’s doing fine.’ If my relationship with someone is so tenuous that the only way they’d hear about such an important piece of news is via a Facebook update, then they’re not really a friend.
I deleted some old school friends from my list when they paper-RSVPd to my wedding and then didn’t turn up, with no explanation before or since. I think that’s reasonable.
Other than that, if I’ve had a drink with you or am likely to in the future, we’re good. I don’t mind if people don’t comment on my stuff, whether it’s babies or weddings or birthdays or having become Queen of the Fucking Universe, or whatever. It’s not like announcing it in real life and having people blank you, it’s the internet. People have cat videos to watch.
Oh, if you join a stream of racist or otherwise obnoxious groups, I’ll take the piss out of you, then unfriend you. This is a hypothetical, because I tend not to drink with racists. I do drink with the generally obnoxious, but I have a higher tolerance for that.
… Actually, I tell you what I am a dreadful arse about - people who set up profiles for club nights or a business or whatever, then friend me. I really get in an unbearable web 2.0 nerd snit about that, let me tell you what. “You’re not a person! You’re a club! Make a page!Use the internet properly!MUUUUUUUM!”
… I might report them too, sometimes. I’m not proud.
My husband and I often discuss this. That the wonder of the internet and instant communication can take all the meaning out of the word “friend.” I don’t have too many facebook friends - I’ve been picky - but I still have a number of FB “friends” that I accepted because “It would be nice to stay in touch” who I’ve discovered that its actually rather neutral to stay in touch.
They’re not holier-than-thou motherfuckers. They’re normal people. Do you comment on every major life event you see posted in your news feed?
Look, I hate to break it to you, but your newborn is probably not cute. In all likelihood, it looks like a fried egg with arms and legs. Now, it doesn’t take long to hit the “like” button, but when you think about it, what does it really do?
I have 299 Facebook friends. 49 of them commented when I posted that I was engaged, and another 50-odd “liked” the post. I was stunned. Considering that most people won’t log on at the right time to see you pop up in their news feed - after all, most people aren’t going to scroll through more than one or two pages of posts - anything over 20% is a lot of attention.
I just wanted to quickly add that those people who are updating their status but not commenting may be doing so from a phone and are not really going through all the feed on that tiny screen, so miss it. I do that all the time.
I really don’t give a shit what the SDMB thinks of this position. I was more interested in what makes YOU unfriend someone which is why I asked the question.