Facebook Replaces Phone Calls & Emails

Yesterday, an old high school friend mentioned deleting a large number of friends in honor of National UnFriend Day ...  Jimmy Kimmel is the cruel culprit and cause for careless random unfriending this week. I realize it is pathetic to admit I care, but I do. Remember my post regarding Facebook unfriending and deleting back in June? Sadly, the truth is, Facebook has become my lone lifeline to certain old friends and even family members.


Gone are the days of emails, texts and phone calls (remember phone calls!) ... Today I find out about friend's pregnancies, divorces, engagements, new jobs and other big events via Facebook.  For example: an old friend once threatened to delete her account and I felt my heart drop. She rarely replies to texts and is too busy for phone calls, so my only link to her at this point is Facebook. Then again, maybe without Facebook, she will be forced to pick up the phone again the way we did back in 2003.

Friends who have moved away and purchased new homes I may never see, I get a glimpse into their world through their Facebook albums. Old buds or former work associates I don't really speak with keep me posted on their new babies and important career moves via FB. I'd never know otherwise. Can anyone relate to this? These days I've found myself too busy or too tired to chat on the phone, but I welcome a private message sent through Facebook. So drop your friends a line, let them know what you're up to and think twice before unfriending someone who really does care.

Unfriended on Facebook? Unfollowed on Twitter or Blogger?

This weekend I spent all of Saturday afternoon helping two former classmates plan our 20th high school reunion. While hitting up our high school contacts on Facebook via Blackberry and laptop, we made a horrifying discovery. Wouldn't you know it, a bit of "unfriending" had gone down over the past few months. We took a few moments to digest the devastating situation and did our best to cheer each other up. A year ago, I blogged about being deleted from Facebook and/or unfollowed on Blogger, and the experience is still the same.

It hurts. I won't pretend to deny it. Being unfriended (remember, it was word of the year in 2009!) has a way of bringing back feelings of being ousted from the cool kids lunch table at school. It makes you wonder if you said something offensive or "liked" something uncool. What exactly was it that turned off the receptionist from your old job or your kindergarten crush?

Perhaps this particular person was sick of seeing your Farmville updates and didn't know they could simply hide the game. It's true! There are Facebookers who have yet to figure out how to add photos or hide people's status updates. If that's the case, someone needs to teach these Facebook folk to hate the game not the player. I'm not into those games and was psyched to hide the games!

Then there's Twitter. One day you're riding high with 706 followers, the next you're down to 704. What happened? Who unfollowed? Was it a bot or two? Was it someone who simply deleted their Twitter account? Did you tweet a few too many times poolside bragging about your lavish Bora Bora trip? One will never know. Twitter interaction obviously isn't as personal as Facebook. You haven't bonded with someone's family through their 500 photo albums and kept up with their routine through comments and status updates. I guarantee the feeling of loss isn't as deep with the tweeter as it is with the Facebook unfriender.

When it comes to the act of unfollowing, bloggers might agree that is one of the cruelest forms of being "dissed and dismissed." Most of us follow hundreds of blogs. The Blogger dashboard allows you to hide any blog you want (similar to Facebook's hide functionality) without letting them know. No need to unfollow! If you really don't want to see a blogger's blog in your reader, just "Hide from List" -- it's easy and painless for your fellow blogger. Think about it, what if you finally reached 300 followers and that one person brought you back down to 299? Ouch, right?

Just know in your heart if someone unfriended you today on Facebook or stopped following you on Twitter or Blogger, it's okay to grieve the loss. We've all been there and your feelings are valid. Yes, you will get over it, unless of course it's a close friend or family member. In that case, I suggest stop questioning yourself and go directly to the source. Call them out on such uncool social networking etiquette and just squash it! (To you younger kids, that was '90s slang for make-up and be chill.)

Thanks for reading and feel free to share your personal experience with being unfriended or unfollowed.

UPDATE: IN RESPONSE TO YOUR SWEET COMMENTS, I SWEAR I WASN'T RECENTLY "UNFRIENDED" OR "UNFOLLOWED." SOME FRIENDS WERE DISCUSSING IT THIS WEEKEND AND I FELT COMPELLED TO REVISIT THE TOPIC. I'M NOT HURTING, I SWEAR. :-)