The Drama of Being Defriended

I wonder if the founding fathers of the inter-webs imagined a world in which one could eliminate a person from their {cyber} life by a simple click of a button: DEFRIEND!

Oh the drama of being defriended! I never gave much thought to this until I started running my business through social media outlets. So much of who I am is out there in black and white for the whole world to see and like and criticize. I knew that getting into this business, but I didn’t think I’d care that much.

Boy, I was wrong.

Now, don’t go thinking that I have a big head. I have lost friendships and relationships and lost sleep over them, but they were in the real world and there were parting words; closure.

Not so much online, it’s just a click.

A Popularity Contest For Adults

I started looking at numbers when I created a fan page – all businesses do. The goal is to get ‘likes,’ to be liked! That is how you thrive on social media. It’s like a popularity contest for adults. I once had a customer ‘block’ me, or so I thought that they did. I racked my brain and went over messages that we sent back and forth trying to figure out what I did wrong.

How did I insult her?

Was I too pushy?

WHAT DID I DO?????

Then I found out that she removed herself from FB because of harassment from an associate – Halleluiah! It wasn’t me! I knew I didn’t do anything wrong, so why did I even question if it was me? I am a grown woman worrying about people de-friending me on Facebook.

I should probably seek help.

After this incident is when I started paying attention to my personal page- my FRIENDS. These are all people who I have established some type of relationship with close friends, acquaintances, clients, customers. Yes, I know not everyone opens their life up to this many people, but I do. I’m a people person. Because I ‘friend’ a lot of business associates, I really do try to not offend, but sometimes it happens. Hey, I’m human too!

Where the ending? ReFriending, UnFriending, De-Friending

This is all leading up to an interesting thing that happened to me recently. I received a friend request from someone I thought I was already friends with. Wait; let me re-phrase that, someone I KNEW I was friends with. You know, this can only mean one thing: At some point they decided to ‘un-friend’ me!! Now, let’s be honest here, we all know that de-friending doesn’t happen accidently!! You get asked a million time to confirm that you want to de-friend. So here I was being asked if we could be friends again when I had no idea we were not friends anymore!

I sound like a crazy woman, I know!

Time For an Evaluation

Then I decided to do a little reading. Am I the only one who dwells over this? Is there a special support group for people who dwell over lost Facebook relationships?!? Low and behold actual studies have been done on this topic.

I am not alone in this cyber dilemma.

Christopher Sibona, a doctoral student at the University of Colorado Denver Business School and author of a social media study that tracked the effects of being ostracized on social media, says, “respondents {in the study} reported reduced self-esteem, feelings of not belonging and a loss of control after being unfriended.

Respondents also say they had a worse mood after a social media breakup. The cost of maintaining online relationships is really low, and in the real world, the costs are higher. In the real world, you have to talk to people, go see them to maintain face-to-face relationships. That’s not the case in online relationships. Since it’s done online there is an air of unreality to it but in fact there are real-life consequences. We are still trying to come to grips as a society on how to handle elements of social media. The etiquette is different and often quite stark.”

He goes on to say, “People think social networks are just for fun, but in fact what you do on those sites can have real world consequences.” The study showed that, “40% of people who have been defriended would avoid the person ‘in real life’”, with women being more likely to avoid than men.”

The Reality of Our Current State

GOOD LORD! What is this world coming to????? Social media is not real life. What you do online will have consequences in the real world. Not with just de-friending, but in what you comment, what pictures you post, Tweet and share! You might not care, but as humans we should be concerned when someone feelings are hurt.

So my parting advice to you would be to really think before you click that button.

• Will you ever see that person in real life again?
• Are you really willing to completely burn that bridge?

You know you can just hide them from your news feed, that way if their posts annoy you, you don’t have to see them. I’m not saying that there is never a good reason to de-friend or block someone; I’m just saying that you’d better have a good reason, because if you ever encounter them it could be very uncomfortable.

#Awkward

And just to lighten the post a bit….Jimmy Fallon never fails to make me laugh with his #AwkwardDate segment.