Unfriending

Do you ever unfriend people on social media? I've been wondering about this lately, and it seems like some people regularly sever online friendships. I know most people are slightly hurt when they realize they have been defriended, so why do people do it?

If I really find someone from high school (or whatever) so offensive, I usually just block their posts (although I don't think I've ever actually done that). I would only defriend someone I thought was a danger to me/stalking me/threatening me.

So anyhow, do you unfriend people? What are your criteria for doing so? And if you are one of those "social media or braindead/moronic" people: would you defriend people here on HF?

 

I unfriend.

 

I don't see anything wrong with it. Sometimes you are just not friends with people anymore, and you are not interested in anything about them anymore.

 

I unfriend people once in a great while for various reasons. Usually it is because they remain quiet for months on end and then when they finally comment on one of my posts, there is just a bit of disrespect in what they say and how they word it. It usually comes from people that would never talk to me like that in person and are 800 miles away these days since I moved from Jersey 6 years ago. I guess they feel like they can get away with it and I let them but then I quietly unfriend the fuckers and forget about it.

 

I 'unfriended' facebook years ago the first time they changed their privacy settings without warning.
Fortunately that was before most of my relatives discovered facebook lol

I agree though it's not cool to unfriend individuals, no matter the offense... except as you said, if you feel endangered somehow.

 

Never been on Facebook, but all this talk of friending/unfriending sounds stupid. So many moronic phrases have been coined thanks to the internet.

 

Says the man with 91 friends on Hipforums . I didn't even mention FB in my original post, if you even read it. I'm pretty sure you can "unfriend" people in real life, too.

 

Don't take offense, it wasn't directed at you... I'm just saying.

Generally when I think of friending and unfriending people, I think of Facebook. Plus, you specifically mentioned social media, and Facebook is the most popular of the "social media" websites.

Of the 91 friends I have on Hipforums, probably 90% of them no longer post here. I am just too lazy to remove them from my list, which is probably why unfriending someone would be too much effort to me. It's pretty easy to just ignore someone who's being annoying. Most of what people post on social media sites is garbage anyway.

 

Fair enough. But I also meant Twitter, Tumblr & other blogs. Also, wouldn't you say HF is social media, too?
Wikipedia sayz: "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content."

I like how you phrased that (Unfriending someone is too much effort, and it's easy to ignore annoying people). I guess I agree but words eluded me. That pretty much hits the nail.

 

I probably haven't made any changes to my "buddy list" on here in a long while..

Also, I only used it to see who was online at any given moment. If i want to PM someone, chances are i'm already looking at a post of theirs, so i just go through their name that way.

 

It is a pretty childish sounding phrase.
Better than "I hate you" I guess...Just like 'file sharing" sounds better than
"Hey, we're stealing intellectual property!"

 

The only 'unfriending' that's kinda got to me due to knowing them irl has been a couple instances on Facebook of people unfriending me. In my cases, I feel like it's been done in a passive aggressive manner, like lacking any explanation why they didn't want me on their buddy list. The irony about one of those situations was I ran into the girl a year later and we briefly caught up and what seemed in all earnest she said "You should add me on Facebook."

I've read some people wanting to remove a lot of people from their facebooks, not sure I follow the reasoning for that unless there are max capacity friend limits or something, I don't participate too much on Facebook.


Hipforums is my primary source for online social interaction.

 

Yes, I have...and it is only because I felt betrayed and the trust was broken. A time or two I was wrong, so I added them back again. LOL!

Not here, of course.

 

i don't think i've ever unfriended someone on hipforums. i may have ignored a couple requests though.

but i've defriended a few people on facebook. since rat doesn't have it, i'll explain. all of your friends' statuses show up in your news feed, the homepage of facebook. so you see the most recently updated statuses.

i defriend someone if they generally have annoying posts..and then have an especially annoying one - i defriend them. it just cleans up my news feed so that there is more enjoyable content next time. i think the last person i defriended had a status about her kid going poopy and a picture of him near the potty. i don't fuckin care. and i haven't spoken to that woman since we were in high school together.

instead of just unsubscribing to their posts, i'd rather just defriend them. somehow i ended up with over 400 "friends" on there. i'd like to get it a lot lower, but it's actually a lot of effort to delete many people in one sitting. so i'm doing it slowly.


now that i see GB's post:
i guess i want to "clean out" my friend list because it's just not necessary. the whole site is i guess, just like HFs...
but do i really need to share my stuff with people i don't interact with? people that i wouldn't talk to if i saw them in real life? i ended up with all these FB friends in college, and i'm just not in touch with the majority of them any more.

facebook really is not good for social interaction i think. it adds some level of internet anonymity feeling to what you do on there....but it's with people you know. so it's kinda easy to piss someone off. i try to take it very UNseriously, but some people don't.

some websites make you like people that you don't even know (like these forums )
but facebook makes you start to dislike people that you were friends with.

people share their views too often. i don't care if you're pro-life. posting pictures of aborted fetuses doesn't help. don't like animal abuse? better post a picture of a dog with no face!


i've gotten defriended by a really good friend on there. i mean, he was my BEST friend in 11th grade. we have kept in touch throughout the years, and we ended up living in the same city too. he was at my wedding. but ....times have changed, he wasn't really interesting or fun anymore. he was always bitching about working and being broke (having 3 kids doesn't help those complaints)....blah blah blah
we weren't really good friends anymore
and i saw him complaining on facebook about having to go to work.

i was on facebook at work haha, with a broken thumb, so i typed "wah wah" as my status (that's a cry noise)
i think he knew it was directed at him, so he defriended me, and we haven't spoken since, not for lack of trying on my part. i guess i really pissed him off. i admit it was a stupid passive aggressive thing to do, and i apologized for it. but anyways, that is a lot of rambling i've just done

 

I've unfriended people here, tumblr, Instagram and Facebook. Tumblr does really count cuz other than a few people from here I don't know them. Instagram was a few friend kids, they probably don't even know I'm gone. The people from here are usually gone or I don't talk too. And Facebook is a little different. They are people that are real in my life so it rare when I do. The last one was my wife's ex, he said everyone should stop eating fish because of fukushima.

 

i don't think it's that crazy to be concerned about radiation after that. i've read about tuna especially turning up with radioactive cesium in them.

radiation fuckin sketches me out. i work with it in the lab sometimes. it's supposedly not that bad, but i dunno....

i dislike full body scanners because of the radiation too.

 

He's a fuckin idiot I was just trying to help him by showing him pics of his grandson cuz he isn't allowed to see him. And saying a blanket statement of stop eating all fish is ignorant.

 

i unfriend the idiots that fill my newsfeed with stupid religious shit and stupid obama shit

and stupid inspirational quotes

 

Imagine someone walking up to you in real life and saying "I don't want to be your friend anymore". Maybe in elementary school maybe, but that never really happens at all in your adult years.

The thing is nowadays we see people more *online* then we do off, and for some who feel they do not want to see someone's life for whatever reason - they unfriend them. It's like putting on your sunglasses or turning the other way. Forget them, carry on with your life as long as YOU are happy.

If they are still your friend in real life, then why would it really matter - right? They would be ones that cared and counted the most anyway :sunny: