Indicators that you can probably delete someone from your friend list on Facebook?

[Arnold_Winkelried]

@Shot_From_Guns

I’m a very funny person. This has been verified by science.

I’m sure you’re a comic genius. But even a genius can have an off day. I submitted my joke to a peer-reviewed board of professional humorists, and it killed!

Terrible analogy. More like you’re standing on a porch at a party, and you say, “I just had a baby!” and the people who hear you say “Congrats!” or maybe smile at you, but you don’t get any response from the people who’re in the living room or the kitchen or the bathroom, so you decide that you’re never again speaking to anybody who didn’t come up and shake your hand right then and there.

That analogy doesn’t describe the OP’s situation either. He said that the people who he can assume would have read his announcement didn’t respond. Not just anyone who is on his friends list on Facebook.

To address the rest of your post, I view it differently. I look at it this way:
I (generic I) have people on my Facebook friends list. I post on Facebook a major event in my life (e.g. the birth of my baby). Those people have several posts around the time I make my post, talking about trivial stuff.
The possibilities I see are:
a) The person saw it, but didn’t feel the need to say anything to me.
b) The person uses Facebook a lot, but the way they use Facebook means that they don’t see my updates.

In case a): they are not much of a friend. Your etiquette seems to be “I don’t have to congratulate you on something unless you send me a personalized announcement”. I think that is being childish. If I found out through my friend’s blog or Facebook posting “I just had a baby”, I’m not going to ignore it and think “well obviously he didn’t care to send me a card announcing it so I don’t have to respond until he does.” I’ll say to myself “Maybe, as a new father, he’s busy, and doesn’t have time to send out announcement cards?” To him I’ll say “Congratulations! How’s it going? What’s the baby’s name?” etc. I can take the two minutes to type up an e-mail, or, even more shocking, actually respond to him on Facebook!

in case b) - They’re not reading my updates, so there’s no reason that they should see them.

Doesn’t seem that complicated to me.

If I unfriend someone (or remove them from my updates list - the two are essentially the same for me, because that’s what I use Facebook for - to communicate with people via status updates etc.), and they notice, they can easily ask me what went wrong, or ask to be my friend again. If they don’t notice, then again, it’s obviously no big deal. If they decide to sit there in a snit, never mention it to me, and stew about it, then, what’s the expression? They are “displaying all the maturity of a petulant child.”

I can see your point of view, and I don’t say you’re necessarily wrong. But I can see the OP’s point of view also, and I don’t agree that his position is totally unreasonable.

[Arnold_Winkelried]

@DiosaBellissima

Whatever. I’m deleting all of you assholes from Facebook. Not a single ONE of you liked the Michael Jackson video I posted an hour ago and I mean fuck, it’s the anniversary of his death and you guys are all jerks. If you don’t care about what’s important to me, I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU!!!

stomps off

Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Please choose the best of the following responses - I still want to be your FACEBOOK FRIEND!

My deepest apologies, I didn’t realize that the death of Michael Jackson resonated so strongly with you, and that posting this video was a major event in your life. I will try to be more cognizant in the future.
OR
I didn’t meant to hurt your feelings, but surely you understand that Facebook etiquette specifies that I only need to reply to your post if you send me an accompanying personal invitation announcing the video.
OR
I know I posted several times while you were talking about Michael Jackson, but I have so many posts from friends filling my page that I missed all your posts and anyway I always post from my Android phone so I only see what I write myself and not other people’s posts and also I only check Facebook once a month but please keep me on your list because your updates are SO IMPORTANT TO ME!

[Freudian_Slit]

Come on, guys, leave Cubsfan alone! Just leave him alone!

[Ellen_Cherry]

@Cubsfan

Holy crap. Quite a pile on here. Almost didn’t check back to this thread. I tend to start them and forget about them.

<snip>

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, insulting other posters here is against the rules. Starting threads and not coming back to them is bad manners. I’m not going to issue you an official warning; however, your behavior here is out of line. Don’t do it again.

Ellen Cherry
IMHO Moderator

[Cubsfan]

Whats the difference between an official warning and “dont do it again?”

[Kyla]

@Cubsfan

Whats the difference between an official warning and “dont do it again?”

If you get an official warning, the mods send you a PM so you won’t miss it.

[Ephemera]

The former is a mark against you in the official ledger and can lead to banning. The latter is just helpful advice.

[Ellen_Cherry]

@Cubsfan

Whats the difference between an official warning and “dont do it again?”

If you do it again, you’ll get a Warning, which we keep track of. Notes, or “helpful advice,” isn’t tracked and represents an effort to keep you on track. If you want to discuss it further, open a thread in ATMB.

Ellen

[Shot_From_Guns]

@Arnold_Winkelried

That analogy doesn’t describe the OP’s situation either. He said that the people who he can assume would have read his announcement didn’t respond.

No, what he said was:

Probably 20% of my “friends” who are active FBers never commented, liked or acknowledged the birth in any way.

FOUR FIFTHS of the people he described as active in some way commented on his post. Eighty percent. And yet somehow, he’s interpreting the remaining one in five to be *deliberately *slighting him, when it’s possible that his impersonal and undirected announcement simply slipped by them.

Again, you’re putting words in my mouth. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be rude to ignore a blanket announcement if you happened to see it. However, the problem is that *we don’t know *who saw it, and the OP is just assuming that everyone who didn’t repond saw his post and simply chose not to acknowledge it.

*THAT *is why you send a personal announcement if you want to get a response.

If your criterion for who to be friends with is that they hang on every word that you broadcast into the aether, then it’s probably for the best that we’re not friends.

[Arnold_Winkelried]

@Shot_From_Guns

[H]e’s interpreting the remaining one in five to be *deliberately *slighting him, when it’s possible that his impersonal and undirected announcement simply slipped by them.

Possible, but he also said that these are active people, who have many posts in the time period where he posted several times about his new baby, so his assumption that they saw his posts is not all that unlikely either.

If your criterion for who to be friends with is that they hang on every word that you broadcast into the aether, then it’s probably for the best that we’re not friends.

And now you’re putting words into my mouth. I never said that people have to respond to every post. But major life events are worthy of a comment. Regardless, if you don’t see my posts, then you won’t miss them if I remove you from my friends list. In any case, I know I don’t need to worry about you - I can tell that you’re hanging on my every word, and that in the five minutes I have to review my post, you’ll be ready to save the original in case I change my mind during the edit window, so that you can embarass me with it later!

I can understand why some people think the OP’s criteria are too strict and he’s acting hastily. But I haven’t read anything here that makes me thing that the OP is crazy or totally out of line to remove those people from his friends list. I wouldn’t necessarily do the same thing, but I thought that his approach to Facebook was getting a bad rap in this thread, so I thought I would present another point of view. I’ve devoted about as much time to this issue than I care to, so I’m not guaranteeing that I will continue to debate the point.

[Shot_From_Guns]

@Arnold_Winkelried

Possible, but he also said that these are active people, who have many posts in the time period where he posted several times about his new baby, so his assumption that they saw his posts is not all that unlikely either.

People have already given you many plausible reasons that someone who is actively posting even right at the very second that the OP’s baby announcement went out might not have seen it. If you choose to disregard those, so be it.

Regardless, if you don’t see my posts, then you won’t miss them if I remove you from my friends list.

And again, you disregard both that (a) just because someone isn’t reading your updates in a timely fashion doesn’t mean they won’t get there eventually and (b) some people want to have access to parts of your profile other than your status updates.

I think you’re right. There’s really no point in “debating” this any further.

[Acsenray]

Facebook status updating is not a personal medium of communication, so I never feel obligated to respond, regardless if the degree of goodness or badness of the news, especially if three or more people have already responded exactly as I would. And I never use the “like” button – if I don’t have anything substantive to say, there’s no point. Punching a butto is an empty gesture.

[Acantha]

I’m late to the party, but I only delete people who post racist or homophobic stuff, repeated requests to *repost this or jesus will be pissed * or the one guy who kept popping up in a chat window to ask me if I had a webcam.

Apparently there are scads of bored married women dying to flash random loonies on facebook? :dubious:

[Neptunian_Slug]

@nikonikosuru

Sounds like somebody’s sour that they and their new baby aren’t the center of everyone’s universe.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

[wolf-alice]

@RedBloom

I had a FB “friend” (an old roommate from 10 years ago) send me a PM the other day (3 paragraphs long, mind you) about my status updates being “passive aggressive” retaliations against her previously posted status updates - and that I was her online punching bag and how I had said backhanded things to her in the past and that stuck with her.

Whoah now, wait. We have the same friend, and she’s joined Twitter. She sent me a great screed about she knew I was sending her passive-agressive messages, because one of my tweets referenced a beret, and SHE wore a beret at one point, and did I have any idea how hurtful this was? Then she announced that she was, with great regret, blocking me from her Twitter, I assume because I was stalking her by making veiled references to hats. 2010 is confusing.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Acantha

Apparently there are scads of bored married women dying to flash random loonies on facebook? :dubious:

Well, not scads. But you’ll never know if you don’t ask…

[Shot_From_Guns]

@wolf-alice

2010 is confusing.

Not really. Just crazy people finding new ways to be the same old crazy.

[CrazyCatLady]

I probably wouldn’t respond to multiple updates about a new baby for a couple reasons. I’d probably be in the process of sending a card or gift, and wouldn’t see the point of bothering with FB comments when I’m sending them IRL.

And, well, there’s the problem of being honest without sounding rude or dismissive or passive-aggressive or bitchy. I don’t think your baby is all that cute, generally–it looks like a generic baby at best, and W.C. Fields on a bender at worst–and I don’t think reproduction is an accomplishment, so it’s not something I’d congratulate you on. So what am I supposed to say? “Well, good for you” just doesn’t really seem adequate, you know?