Saw an old friend today. We had a nice chat. We averted the issue that he recently tried to delete me from his list of friends on Facebook, by both choosing not to make reference to it at all. He is probably a little embarrassed because I had discovered his online snub. And in hindsight I am slightly embarrassed by the numerous desperate messages I sent in response, which begged and pleaded to know the reasons I had been so cruelly rejected this way, when we had never even had so much as a crossed word (although he did eventually concede to my seemingly emotionally-unstable harassment and reinstated me).
But this highlights a fundamental problem with Facebook relationships. If friends in real life drift away, it’s never really an issue. You might bump into one another and maybe you’ll sacrifice a couple of minutes to indulge polite conversation, or you might both avert your eyes and mutually pretend not to have noticed one another - no harm done, life goes on. But to actually ‘delete’ a friend seems like a rather bold statement. You’re basically telling the ‘deleted’ that, “I have such little regard for you I can’t even stand to see your name in a big list with a postage stamp-sized photo next to it.”
What’s the matter with these people? Do they go through their own phonebook with a pair of scissors, mercilessly cutting people out until it resembles some weird origami snowflake? I mean, to be honest I can’t stand half the fuckers in my ‘Friend List’ either. In fact the thought of them all gathering in one room together chills me to the core. It’d be too much of a juxtaposition, all those old school friends, colleagues, business contacts, distant acquaintances, family members, drinking buddies, ex-girlfriends, ex-housemates all being together, each with different memories of my personal failings and embarrassments from over the years, all on hand and ready to share. But even so, do I go round eliminating people from a list, like some sadistic Nazi general in a Jewish concentration camp? No I don’t - cos that’d just be rude!
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