Sheena recently posted on Facebook that if she gets a FB notification of a birthday and she doesn’t feel close enough to the person to wish you then she unfriends them. At the time I thought “Shame, imagine being unfriended on your birthday” but it stuck with me and got me thinking about my Facebook friends.
I don’t have many Facebook friends and I have come to realise I actually ok with that. When Facebook came out, we had a massive class reunion of sorts. Suddenly I was friends with almost everyone I went to school with, people I hadn’t even thought about it 10/15 years suddenly had a front row seat into my life. Then I started blogging and readers and fellow bloggers were suddenly my friends. After my appearance on 3Talk, random viewers were suddenly asking to be my friend.
Friend requests were coming from all sides, even a few desperate solider’s from Afghanistan wanted to be my friend. I was finding myself scrolling past feeds of people I had nothing in common with, didn’t know or didn’t even want to know.
I share my life online, I share here, on twitter and on Facebook but I share different things on the different platforms. I am all about the noise on twitter, its where I get my news from and where I catch up on whats happening in the world and where I go to for quick crowd sourcing. I share stories from our lives on my blog, offer advise and build relationships with my readers. Facebook is somewhere in between all of that but I do feel it needs to be, for me, a little more personal than twitter and should enhance existing relationships.
Some time during last year Facebook introduced the unfollow button, we all cheered and unfollowed everyone we didn’t want to be friends with but couldn’t unfriend. Very passive aggressive of Facebook, and us! But I unfollowed people but it still felt wrong. So I have started, slowly cleaning up my friend list. There has to be a real connection between us, we have to connect and talk to each other.
I am also clearing out the negativity and drama. If all you share is negative stories about South Africa, or moan constantly or are just in general negative about life, I don’t want to be Facebook friends with you. The same applies to pages I follow that are constantly negative or promoting drama.
I am clearing the clutter out of my timeline!
How do you decide who you make friends with? Do you accept all requests?
20 Responses
I accept friend requests from people I actually know in real life. If we’re not close, or if I haven’t seen the person in years, or if they post spammy things, I unfollow rather than unfriend. I feel too guilty to unfriend. (Unless the person in question is someone I’d really not be associated with.)
melanieblignaut recently posted…Yes, We Will Be Homeschooling
Laura, if you have Melanie’s email, please can you tell her my comments are caught in her spam folder and she needs to please approve them so they appear? Tx!!!
Marcia (123 blog) recently posted…The first SUMMER photowalk with the kids
You’re so right, drown out all the negativity. I started doing this with my twitter timeline. I feel awesome when I unfollow an account, it’s not being mean it’s just that I’m not in the same headspace as I was when I followed them.
I love your new theme! To be honest I wish I could delete a lot of my facebook friends, it’s just going to take me a loooong time!
Shaney Vijendranath recently posted…A Letter to My Toddler
Shaney – I am doing mine slowly. If I see something come up of someone I don’t know etc I unfriend. So its a process
Hehe, Jon often tells me I’m awful for unfriending people on their birthdays. And the truth is, I bet you they don’t even know! The funny thing is that it’s become a bit of a joke now and for the last few weeks whenever I wish anyone on FB, they’re so excited they made the cut. It’s a silly way of doing things, but ensures that everyday I do a mini audit of the people I share my private life with. I feel exactly the same way as you – Facebook for me is a place to connect with my family and closer friends, so it’s a little more intimate. I don’t like the idea of strangers seeing photos and check-in’s of where and what I’ve been doing. On Twitter I’m a little more vague and my blog is basically a very zoomed in look at my life.
PS: LOVE THE NEW LOOK.
SheBee recently posted…Pregnancy is a mind f*ck, basically.
Thanks Sheena – well thats just the thing I don’t think its mean anymore and you are right they probably don’t even notice 🙂
After the Jozi meetup and the talks there I unfriended about 150 people – people who I do not read their blogs anymore, old school people I felt I had no connection to, random people, or people that never posted anything about themselves. It felt great.
cat@jugglingact recently posted…Its been a bit more than a month since my last blogpost
Good idea. I did the “hide post” thing on someone who was always negative, so they couldn’t see it. She actually really helped me once with this forgiveness exercise but I could tell she still has a lot of it to do herself…
Heather recently posted…23 Kids Play Areas in Johannesburg Where Mom Can Relax
I think that if you’re on social media, you should be reviewing your friends lists at least once a year. In the process of deleting my Facebook account recently, I got to see exactly how many people and pages I’ve followed over the years because of some or other promotion or competition they were running, all of which gave them access to my profile and information on some level. There were just under 200 of them that I had connected with purely because they offered me the chance to win something. Clearly, the underlying issue here is my addiction to competitions. But it did force me to take a close look at how easily I’ve allowed strangers into my life…
I only except requests of people I connect with in some way. I have started deleting people who post animal and people abuse photos. I think it is a brilliant idea to unfriend those who I don’t have anything in common with when the birthdays comes up. LOL…now I will be checking those who don’t wish me on my birthday later this month…and maybe unfriend them too 😛
Lynette Jacobs recently posted…CREATE magazine – Coffee LOVE – CSI 365-10
Lovely post.
I have readers of my blog and newsletter as Facebook friends, OLD online colleagues (I’ve been online since 2006) who I was in mastermind groups with, etc.
And some of them are not “friends”.
I realised when I hit 1000 friends that this was madness, so I went through the first 200 to check if they were really people I knew or engaged with. There are readers who regularly comment or like pics or what-have-you; those ones stay.
But then I got tired and now I use the weekly birthday notification to go unfriend all of them right there and then (so it’s only on their actual birthday for maybe 2 of the 20 people :))
Marcia (123 blog) recently posted…The first SUMMER photowalk with the kids
I often have a cull of my ‘friends’. Sometimes I cannot bring myself to delete someone so I simply ‘hide’ them from my timeline. I think there are about 9 people I actually see on my timeline haha!
My pet hate is when people talk to dead relatives. There is no facebook in the afterlife!!!!
Katy {What Katy Said} recently posted…A Simple Game of Chase
I don’t accept all requests…I actually need to know someone before. After that I might just mute them if the post super annoying things ALL THE TIME.
Louisa recently posted…The BIG bash
I’m with you Laura!
I also use the various SM platforms for different things and every time I get a big media feature, whether it be print, TV or radio, I suddenly start getting a ton of friend requests from people I don’t know. I refuse to accept them!
I have no problems unfriending people on FB but not in a passive/aggressive OOOH you upset me sorta way. If I don’t know them, if they add no value to my time online or if I find their posts to be overly negative I will unfriend. I always ask myself, is this someone I’ve been friends with or would be friends with IRL, if the answer is no, then bye bye!
I’m reading a really freaky book at the moment, the story explores how much we share of ourselves online and how we could potentially be opening ourselves up to all kinds of psycho’s! It’s a hectic read and has me thinking….
The Blessed Barrenness recently posted…Removing the giant chip from my shoulder because I have no business trying to train your monkeys!
Great post. When I first got onto FB it was all about quantity. Popularity was measured by number of friends. Being older and wiser now, I know I would never want anybody I didn’t have a connection with to have that kind of insight into my private life. Thx for the reminder to snip my list again.
Jozi Donjeany recently posted…[The Trauma of Our First Day Back At School]
Jozi – I totally get that. In the beginning it was like I was back in high school – the more friends I had must mean I am popular but it doesn’t mean that at all!! It means people you have nothing in common with have an front row seat into your life.
I am EXTREMELY selective about who I allow on my timeline. I have been unfollowing for the last few months. After my FB break last year (I took 6 weeks off) I started to clean it up. I unfriend at least 1 person a week. I am ALSO going through all my pages and unliking them because THAT clutter is also annoying me.
Pages are actually the noisiest. People just add such rubbish there!
I try to keep my ig, FB and Twitter feeds to under 200 people for each one, and limited to people I actually feel like I know, and I won’t accept a friend request on FB simply ‘coz we’re family.
Then my FB friends are sorted into friends, family, close friends and acquaintances, and my posts are visible accordingly.
Twitter and ig remain publicly visible, but I post differently to both.
I actually went through all my lists in the last week and pruned them quite a bit, which I try to do at least twice a year.