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Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Voted 2009 Word of the Year


UNfriend



The prestigious New Oxford American Dictionary has chosen their 2009 word of the year. The definition is:

unfriend - verb - To remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook


I have a FaceBook account, as well as MySpace, Twitter, and this blog. I never update or use MySpace, in fact I should just delete it. My blog has taken a back seat to my busy summer and my addiction to FaceBook.

My FaceBook account is a quick easy way to keep up-to-date with some bloggers, friends, and family. I've recently been using it to connect with classmates I lost touch with.

::: Waving hi to Barb, Angie, and Diane :::

I had acquired a couple hundred "friends" and started to wonder ... why am I on these friend lists and why do I have so many I don't really follow? I started looking through my list.

Some were bloggers, people that I still read their blogs, yet have no idea about their day to day lives and therefore, I'm lost in the dust with their "status updates." I had quite a few friends and family that didn't keep their news feed up-to-date, and rarely, if ever, commented or left a note on my FB wall. Even my kids friends have "friended" me. Ironically, they comment on my wall more than some of my personal friends.

Point being, I had more "friends" that sat along the wall, not a peep or update out of them, than active connections.

Don and I have "friended" some of the same people. One night, we were both on FB and I saw updates from mutual friends that weren't showing up on my wall. After checking around, I found out FB doesn't post every update, how could they? It's more of a random thing. So if you have a few hundred friends, you're not getting every ones status updates.

I suppose it's no big deal, but there are some people that I enjoy their humor, or their news links and they were getting bumped by my having friended so many.

So, I did the unthinkable ****G A S P **** I unfriended people off my list. I started slicing and dicing and knocked off close to 75 names. After the purge, I did a "status update" about it and I had several people follow suit, saying they totally agreed, and pared their lists too.

Now, I get more updates from the majority of the people on my list. I no longer go crazy trying to go back through updates seeing what I missed, and I'm able to comment more on others updates.

I was listening to a debate on a radio show on this whole issue. The callers and the radio personalities were hilarious with their opinions. You can just imagine ... the whiners, the politically correct theories, the friend collectors ... a whole blog post of its own!

How did we ever survive without social networks?

9 comments:

Sherry said...

lmao--I love this "the friend collectors"...that sounds so creepy!!! Like what, you put them in a jar with little air holes in the lid so they can breathe?!?! Whoever said that in the "debate" is hilarious...what a concept!! A little too "Norman Bates" for me...excuse me now my friend...I have to go to FB and do some "unfriending"!!! How freeing!! :) Have I told you lately, you rock???

Michael said...

I'm sure I'll get over it :)

Joan said...

When I first signed up I friended everyone. I cut back now as well.
As far as status updates, I stayed friends with some people but for various reasons opted out of their status updates. I'm pretty sure when I did that, they stopped seeing my updates too.

lis said...

Just finished watching 'NCIS' how did we ever survive before this electronic age..?
Way to go Nancy!! :)

Boris said...

Great decision to unfriend those friends of your friends that are not your real friends...
:)
Why do we like to expose our lives in FB?
Everybody wants to feel like a celebrity?
Everybody needs to belong to a certain group?
The most important thing I think is to ponder why we are doing what we are doing, specially when it takes a good amount of our precious time!
All the best!

ree said...

I deactivated my whole Facebook account. ;-)

I figured blog and email were quite enough... snirk.

Nancy said...

Ree: Ahhh, you are the culprit that whacked my numbers up an left me frantic trying to figure out who "unfriended" me .... nights of no sleep, hours of going over and over my friend list, vodka, cold sweats, brow furrowing ... and it was you!

Ree my good friend "un" or not ... can't rid of me that quick!

<3

San said...

Ree! I thought you didn't like me anymore ;-)

Michael said...

OMG, I just realized you can click "live news feed" on Facebook and see everyone's updates in real time instead of sporadic updates here and there. Isn't this great?! Now you can add all the friends you deleted back!

I'll be waiting for that request ;)