Facebook Friends: Should this include your frenemies as well as actual friends?

Friending

The act of requesting someone to be your friend on facebook.com, in which they can accept or reject you. If they accept, you can look at their page, but if they reject, you cannot see their page.

Person1: Im "friending" Lisa on facebook right now, i hope she accepts! Person2: Oh im going to "friend" her when i get home as well!I don't understand how some people have 1,000+ friends on their personal Facebook page. Are you REALLY friends with Sally whom you went to pre-school with? Do you have to "friend" the woman you struck up a friendly conversation with in the airport? Unless you are incredibly blessed to have a thousand close friends with whom you enjoy sharing intimate life details with, probably not. I am not trying to get too deep here, as the point of this blog is not to bash Facebook, but more try to understand the human psyche's desire to be connected to every person they have ever come in contact with. Additionally, I want to let people know that, yes, it is OKAY to *gasp* de-friend someone whom you have little or no physical contact with beyond the wall posts. The world will not end if Sally doesn't get to see your wedding photos, and vice versa.

Defriending
1. To remove someone from your Livejournal, MySpace, Facebook, or other social networking site. Doing this is often seen as a passive-aggressive move, telling the person without telling them that you no longer want to be friends. It's also commonly a response to drama.Defriending someone often causes more drama. There are sometimes valid reasons for doing this.

I used to be one of those people. When I first launched my Facebook profile, I wanted to be friends with EVERYONE. LIterally, I searched, and searched (some would call it stalking) to try and find everyone from my past that I could. I friended my pre-school friends, college acquaintances that I had not said more than 2 words to while in school, the cute guy from the bar (while I was single), etc. You get the point. Why did I do this? To satisfy that innate curiosity that every human being has to feel connected. To be a part of something bigger than themselves. As the years progressed, my friends list got longer...and longer....and longer.

This past June, I tied the knot with the love of my life. After I got married, I vowed to live a healthier and more balanced life. Part of my new, adult life consisted of ridding Facebook of all of my "friends" that had no applicability to my "real life." I sat down, and defriended. It took a while, and actually it was more difficult that I thought to judge each person on my list and who was actually relevant and valid to my existence. A lot of my "real friends" informed me that I didn't have to go to the extremities of defriending, that I could simply block posts and hide information from those I didn't deem acceptable to view the entire profile. To me, this seemed counterproductive and against the point of having these "facebook friends" in general. So, I cleaned out my Facebook friend list of almost everyone I didn't speak to at least an annual basis.

Brian's reaction to my defriending:

Fast forward to a week later, 1 am while I am in bed with my husband. I receive an anonymous text message saying "wtf... we're not friends anymore? what did I ever do to you? Thanks a lot for nothing." It took me a minute to realize that the text was from a guy whom I had casually hooked up with, on and off, prior to my current relationship. I lived in the same city as this guy, but had not spoken to him in years. Hence, the defriend. It amazed me that Brian (name changed) was not only still actively checking my profile at least weekly, but that he had the audacity to challenge my actions.

Yes! You can do it!

My point is, if you feel like you have over-Friended, please do not feel like you have to block/hide information/start a "best friend" list/etc. to order to post/blog/comment to your heart's content. While I was cleaning up my friends list, my policy was "if you will NEVER call them, never hang out them when they are in town, and refuse to acknowledge their existence beyond a laptop, they are probably not a real friend. You should probably de-friend them. Trust me, you will feel A LOT better after you do! :) Just be prepared for a late night phone call from someone whose existence doesn't actually make a difference to you in your real life.