Read between the lines
By: Zehra Nabi
Issue date: 2/4/10 Section: Opinion
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Okay, so maybe I am not correctly using the New Oxford American Dictionary’s word of 2009 (it is a verb, not a noun), but this year I have indeed made many unfriends. I may not be the first person to bash Facebook, but I recently decided that I have had enough of Farmville notifications and friend suggestions. I am sick of switching between Newsfeed and Livefeed and cannot understand why we need two feeds when having even one was annoying enough. But perhaps most of all, I am creeped out by how easy it is to find out about people without even friending them.
Going through my friend’s photos, I have realized how easy it is to unintentionally access friends’ friends’ albums. And with the wonderful people at FB constantly changing privacy settings, many people failed to notice for weeks that their entire profiles were visible to the world. And even if all your information is only accessible to your approved friends, do you really want someone you just met the day before to have access to your best friend’s off-color comments on your wall or your 8th grade school dance album—the one in which you still have braces and have not quite yet mastered the art of frizz control?
Deciding that in this age of web-based social networking and information technology there might just be too much information going around, I went unfriending a couple of days ago. I certainly did not want to cause unnecessary harm by offending people who I have no reason to not be friends with, and so I aspired to be judicious in my approach towards these purges. I think I did a reasonable job. Here are some examples:
- The prospie who friended me the summer before my first year at Mount Holyoke but then went to Babson instead: unfriend.
- The former internship supervisor who occasionally writes, “lookin gud” on my pictures: keep, but on limited.
- That boy from high school whom I never speak to and has limited me from even seeing his wall: unfriend. If he does not want me looking at his profile, then I do not want him looking at mine.
- The distant cousin who never writes or comments but always brings up something about my profile during family gatherings: keep. If she regularly visits my profile then there is no need for her to find out that she is an unwelcome presence—at least not yet.
- That girl with whom I have 47 mutual friends but never recall ever meeting: unfriend.
- The guy I met once upon a time for five whole minutes who now clutters my newsfeed with announcement regarding his lost keys only to have another feed sharing “just found it!” five seconds later: unfriend.
- My father: keep. He already sent me the friend request, and it is too late to ignore his Facebook presence now.