If you see yourself reflected in Marsha’s words, I ask you to consider that you are following the wrong people. They may have been the right people once upon a time but life is dynamic and Facebook has a tendency to remain static. How many of your Facebook friends are people you call or email on a regular basis? Do you even know their phone numbers or email addresses without looking them up on the informational screens of their Facebook profiles? Do you care?
The dichotomy between Facebook and friends is causing chaos which leads all too often to people like Rachel Jonat, who graced this blog nearly two months ago about thevoyeuristic nature of Facebook. She grew less and less enamored of the site to the extent she quit.
Because I saw status updates and pictures of friends I felt like I had connected with them. I hadn’t. Instead of calling people or seeing people I just watched them on Facebook… I’d rather give up the 189 Facebook friends, the majority of whom I don’t have or want the phone number of, and focus on the people near and dear to me.
Then again, let’s remember that Facebook is about the small things in life. While some people use Facebook to pick up women, most use the site for exchanging gossip about food, the weather, and Hollywood celebrities. Despite new features introduced to Facebook over the past two years, the perception of status updates has hardly changed since I wrote, “The general tone involves Facebook for chit-chat, LinkedIn for networking, and Twitter for collaboration.”
I challenge you to consider you have the wrong friends and that you should unfriend them. There is nothing wrong with this idea, unless you want Facebook to represent your not-real friends. How virtual do you truly want the site to become? How many musing thoughts like Marsha’s will it take before Facebook is reduced from a place we enjoy interacting at to a place we go to because everyone else is there? If we go there because our so-called friends are there, but we’re not really friends with them and their life updates provide little meaning to us (because we only relate to them on Facebook), is it any surprise we quit?
