In the 21st century, the popular social networking site Facebook
has made a verb of the term ‘friend’, and it is now common to ‘friend’ people
on Facebook/field numerous ‘friend’ requests on a regular basis.
However, it is not always clear what the purpose of being Facebook
‘friends’ with someone actually is. In the case of an individual who is
geographically distributed from you despite the fact you work together, or the
individual once lived near you or attended school with you it makes logical
sense to be Facebook ‘friends’ so you can see the pictures and updates from
their life where you are not present [assuming you genuinely like this person
and are interested in remaining connected to them in a superficial regard].
In the case of individuals with whom you are locally socially
acquainted and enjoy hanging out, it makes logical sense to be Facebook
‘friends’ so that you can invite your friends to events, view which events
people plan to attend or receive invites to friends’ performances or parties;
in other words, Facebook acts as a connective device that is easier than
calling/texting everyone every night to say ‘what are you doing, let’s do
something together.’
But we currently abide a culture where ‘friend’ doesn’t really
mean ‘friend’ anymore, but ‘someone I clicked on via the internet’ ‘someone who
has for some reason given me permission to be a spooky voyeur’ or ‘someone into
whom I placed a digital hook in the event I might want to use them for
something someday.’
In an effort to reclaim some semblance of meaning for the word
‘friend’, consider undertaking a Facebook ‘purge’, whereby you ‘unfriend’
everyone who isn’t actually your friend nor someone with whom you are
interested in being friends or getting to know under consideration of being
friends. You have already read a number of mainstream articles advising you not
to be Facebook friends with your ex or your employer, but in addition you
should examine your ‘friend list’ and delete from it the following individuals.
1. Moan
in their Facebook status
The most annoying thing that people do on Facebook is to spray
their walls with vanity-filled drivel, by posting self-indulgent awfulness in
their status updates. "Kerry is sorry how it ended but it had to be done.
I love you and will miss you, and I hope you can apologize one day". Oh
sod off. If you've got something to say to someone, say it. Don't post it on
your wall because no one else is interested, and people just think you're a
prat.
2. The Shitty Speller
Ur posts
r unintelgble. Some of these folks can be helped by using Firefox with its
squiggly red line under misspelled words. Unfortunately, it won't help the
"ain't got no" or the "their, there, they're" problem. It
may mean I'm a bad person, but I would much rather unfriend someone than
correct their spelling and grammar.
3. The Cryptic Poster
All his
statuses are obscure references or song lyrics. It's an attempt to appear more
intelligent when there's really nothing there. I call these "The Emperor's
New Posts." Maybe if I got a hipster decoder ring...
4. The Eeyore Friend
They only
get on Facebook when they want to complain. I'm sorry you lost your tail for
the 50th time, but you're making me want to kill myself.
5. The Friend Whore
Not the
friend who's a whore (those are juicy status updates), I mean the people who
are in some kind of contest to get the most friends ever and who easily have
over 500 friends. Unfriend them and chances are they won't even notice you're
gone.
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