“Unfriending”: Stealth Tactics and Sensible Responses
Comments: 12 - Date: December 15th, 2008 - Categories: Uncategorized
Unfriending may not be the most dramatic of online offenses. But it is among the most hurtful—in large part because it’s so stealthy.
Let’s say you’ve been dating a guy for a few months. After a messy breakup, you both change your relationship status to “Single” on Facebook, which shows up in all of your friends’ News Feeds. That’s bad enough. But a few weeks later, you go to look at the ex’s profile, just to see what he’s been up to…and notice that you’re locked out! The two of you belong to different networks (meaning the default is that you can’t see each other’s information), and so the truth comes out: you’ve been unfriended. The breakup was a big deal, but being unfriended stings in a totally new way. It feels like you’ve been cut out of someone’s life completely. Not only does he not want to date you: he doesn’t even want to be friends with you.
What’s wrong with this picture? Let’s look at this from the other person’s perspective for a moment. It’s possible that he really doesn’t want to be “friends” anymore…though communicating that through the interface of Facebook seems aggressively passive-aggressive. Far more likely: he’s just trying to take his mind off the drama for a little while.
The issue with online social networks is that they conflate “I like you as a person” with “I want to read constant updates about your life.” Sometimes—as in the case of a recent breakup—you don’t want to cut someone out of your life forever; it just hurts to read a play-by-play version of that someone’s life. Especially when you’re on the outs with someone, the intrusion of their updates into an otherwise innocuous News Feed can feel like a slap in the face.
A lot of people respond to that slap by “unfriending” the problematic person in question. This definitely excises the person from your News Feed. And if you pay any attention at all to your News Feed, this can feel like a good way to get your mind off the social drama; your stream of consciousness isn’t constantly being interrupted by reminders of the person you’re trying not to think about.
The problem, of course, is that when you unfriend someone, you show your hand. Facebook might not notify those whom you unfriend, but they’re quite likely to discover the unfriending eventually. Everything in the interface of Facebook, especially, implicitly reveals the presence or absence of an official connection—right down to the encouraging “add to friend” text under a person’s picture in their profile.
Removing a friendship on Facebook is often just a way to remove someone’s updates from your News Feed—it’s not always as dramatic as “I never want to speak to this person, ever again.” And, since people use their News Feeds in so many different ways, it’s almost impossible to figure out why someone removed you as a friend without just asking the other person.
So, should you ask? It depends. If the worry is consuming you, then just asking might be the best response. But a better first response might just be to interpret positively, and give the other person the benefit of the doubt. Real-world confrontations about Facebook friendships can start to feel deeply recursive: if you’re talking, then isn’t there something there? Friendships, relationships, and acquaintanceships are complicated: the single binary of “friend/unfriend” can’t possibly capture all the nuances. If you choose to interpret someone else’s action in the least offensive way possible, you’re not only likely to feel better; you’re also pretty likely to get close to the truth.
And if you’re on the other side? As it turns out, “unfriending” isn’t the only course of action you can take if you want to remove someone’s updates from your News Feed. If you scroll down to the very bottom of the feed, you can click on a small link that reads “Options for News Feed.” This link will take you to a page with the “Less About These Friends” dialog:
If you’re on the outs with someone, it’s easy to add them to the list for a while, and then take them off of it later—all without the public drama of “unfriending.”
Being “unfriended” can be very bewildering. Fortunately, it’s just that—a made-up word, couched in quotation marks. Understanding the way Facebook works can help illuminate the weird phenomenon of unfriendship, and with any luck, offer strategies for dealing with the complications of real-world friendships transposed into online streams of consciousness.
Comment by Ben Turner - December 15, 2008 @ 3:32 pm
It seems as though social networking sites shy away from providing real approximations of peoples’ real relationships with each other. Part of this is probably to keep the peace — if you could list your enemies, or distinguish publically between friends and acquaintances, what would the ramifications be? Social network wars? The other reason may be built upon that…to encourage more and more people to use the SNS and not feel discouraged by any negative experience on the SNS.
The problem is that the “friending” gets superficial and cutting off of relationships becomes even more pronounced when outed.
Comment by Britta Bohlinger - December 15, 2008 @ 6:46 pm
The Urban Dictionary called this very practice of unfriending on facebook simply ‘defacing’. Now, what we seem to witness online in these days is perhaps nothing more dramatic than what happens offline. People move on, call you less often, perhaps even delete your telephone number. You just don’t talk about it. No big deal. In the online sphere – everything becomes visible. The label Natural Born Stalkers springs to mind.
Rather than fuelling the ongoing debate informed by a full blown moral panic I for one think the discussion needs to move on. Unfriending or ‘defacing’ has become a social practice, yes, it may hurt, yes it contributes to a bit more honesty. And yes, no matter how old you are: if things go wrong or you want to move on, unfriending might be a very healthy thing to do. It implies a moment of thinking, a rather conscious decision. And it may actually help to develop a responsible attitude as to who has access to your online life and who is excluded. Better than simply relying on ‘the system’ which regulates. Or not. Passively allowing friends to remain as such in the long list of faces, even though there is no more felt friendship – this indeed may mean to contribute to the very superficialty we should rather avoid.
http://britbohlinger.wordpress.com
Comment by David Spark - December 15, 2008 @ 8:22 pm
De-friending, as I like to call it, is an amazing phenomenon. And in almost every case, a de-friending story is one sided. I’ve yet to hear a full blown two-sided de-friending story that didn’t involve breaking up with a romantic partner.
I’ve written a lot about de-friending (links below) and what I’ve discovered is de-friending usually happens when someone crosses the line as to what that person has defined as their social network. Everyone has a different view as to what their online social network is, and its purpose. When they de-friend someone, they use their self created definition of their social network as the defense. But none of that is actually communicated to the person being de-friended. All that person knows is they’ve been cut off. It can be rather demoralizing.
Read these posts for some more insight.
The Awkwardness of De-friending
http://www.sparkminute.com/?p=441
When technology tells us we have no friends
http://www.sparkminute.com/?p=442
12 Great Tales of De-friending
http://mashable.com/2008/11/25/social-network-defriending/
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Comment by Anne Collier - December 17, 2008 @ 12:59 pm
In a paper she published in New Media & Society last June, London School of Economics social-psychology prof. Sonia Livingstone touches on how clunky her research subjects found social-networking privacy and other features to be – and how they used them to express degrees of intimacy in relationships. This great post reminded me of the study, which I posted about and linked to here .
Comment by Anne Collier - December 17, 2008 @ 1:01 pm
Hmm. I didn’t post that link correctly, apparently. Trying agin: http://www.netfamilynews.org/2008/07/fictionalizing-their-profiles.html
Comment by b - December 17, 2008 @ 10:57 pm
While it seems that ‘social networking’ is here to stay, surely the new will wear off…soon. In a relationship I think it is like not wearing the required clothing…the mystery goes quickly and so does the romance. Being unfriended is like being dropped after having sex on the first date. What were you thinking in the first place? Post less and grow up more.
Comment by Brian - December 18, 2008 @ 12:05 pm
It seems pretty petty to go to the trouble of unfriending someone.
Comment by Ryan - December 18, 2008 @ 5:37 pm
Ha, I love comment #7! 🙂 I agree that removing a friend can be touchy and a sensitive thing, but its necessary sometimes. I had to cancel my time on twitter because of the time I was wasting following people’s tweets. I think that an occasional text message or phone call, or simply catching up with someone when I see them around, is the only way to really go for me. Too much to do.
Comment by Dan Smather - December 29, 2008 @ 12:42 pm
Two points.
1) on FB you can choose to hear less about someone. I just did that with someone I was involved with.
2) on FB I went to defriend this fellow who I feel had crossed the bounds of acceptable behavior. To my surprise he had already done the same. Perfect. Rot in heck, cretin.
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