Lets De Friends!

Mar 16th, 2010 | By | Category: Prose

The fact that my word processor has underlined one word in this opening with the red-line of “No! You idiot!!”, should be some indication that “unfriend” is not a real word. Oxford (in their divine intelligence) has, however, decided otherwise. I have issues with this.

Yes, language is constantly changing based on societal standards, but really… unfriend?? It  is a verb soley applied to a website that may one day be defunct, or perhaps an internet activity that may one day be obsolete.

That is unless by unfriend you mean going over to your soon-to-be-ex-friend’s house and take back all your stuff, send back all their texts and e-mails ever sent, and maybe punch them in the face for good measure…

In short, un- usually implies a reversal in process of sorts. (unwind, unravel, unsee) Frankly I think the prefix de- would be a better one than un- for real life friend removal (some might argue a well placed knife, or a good dose of cyanide would also suffice), but I’m sure I’m on the losing side of this argument.

Personally I hate being 1 out of 600 people on someone’s friend list. It’s not that I want to feel special, but rather I don’t want to feel like an object in someone’s electronic Beanie Baby collection. That being said, I keep my own list below 100 (and even then do some pruning if there’s a long term lack of communication, monosyllabic postings, or too many Facebook application postings).

Then we get asinine news articles with headlines like “Is Facebook Cheapening Our Friendships?”

Uh… no.

Rather people are friending everyone they run into with wanton abandon, and then usually regretting it later, much like going home with that porn star at the bar only to wake up next to lord fugly, and then trying to find a way to sneak out the next morning (sorry I killed your dog Giselle, he would’ve woken you up… I’ll call you!) I have personally told people who ask if I have a Facebook, that I keep mine between close friends and private.

I don’t have my boss

I don’t have my family

I don’t have random friends of friends whom I met once at a party

or the hooker from last night (I found her on craigslist, but that’s a story for another day).

By keeping my list small and intimate, I’m able to keep such pics like the time I got wasted at party, met friends of friends, who then took pictures of me passed out on the couch while some guy in a fur-suit teabagged me, and then posted them on their facebook for their 600 friends to see.

If I had added these friends of friends, surely I would’ve had some lovely stories to tell my boss and family (if I added them too) once my drunken-addled visage crowned with furry balls was tagged with my name.

Is this somewhat of a slippery slope argument? Perhaps, but at least I can trust my 44 friends that they have sound judgement and would not post such material, much less submit it to some social ridicule site like LameBook. You really have to wonder what’s going through the head of someone who posts how their water broke at the grocery store causing them to slip and fall, and go into labor, but worry not, for they are now in the hospital with a concussion and are posting this update from their iPhone as they give birth for all 600 friends to see!

In order to keep these situations down though, I do often prune my list. Sure I have people from High School who added me out of sentimentality (and to maybe help stroke their ego by playing the “Ha Ha, look at me! I have a successful career as a doctor, a house, and a baby!” game), and then never say anything, or respond to any of my love-notes I send. But do I really want them to see those pictures of me coyly staring into the camera while wearing a neon pink speedo?

Only if they’re hot…

Which they aren’t…

So *snip snip* let the defriending begin!

Now if you have even 100 friends, that’s like 1 birthday every 3-4 days, which means they get pushed off to weekends, and then stacked with weddings and baby showers. It’s enough to make me go a little Quasimodo, climb a nearby tower, scream sanctuary, and then fire off a few rounds. As it stands, my 44 friends are scattered, meaning I can still keep in touch with them without having to spend every weekend doing something, and still post scatological-based updates without fear that people will think less of me (they’re all used to me at this point, save for some cringing here and there)

Oh but I use it for networking! Great, there’s LinkedIn to post your resume and make your life as oatmeal bland as possible, in order to get hired into a job where you can post crap on your Facebook like “Haha, I just took a dump in the coffee!”

Oh but LinkedIn isn’t as popular! Fine, then set up a dummy account to take up space on other people’s dummy accounts! It’s not that hard people!

Oh but if I defriend people they’ll talk shit about me on their Twitter! Really, and if they do that you really want them as a friend? Kill yourself now! No, do it! Don’t worry, I’ll be here to take your wallet, or you could just give it to me to hold onto while you tape that plastic bag around your head.

I personally think it’s a sad state of affairs when we have online help guides from newspaper publications for how to behave online (http://live.washingtonpost.com/web-hostess-031010.html). Really though, if you need to ask, you should probably just get off the ride now, before you fall and hurt yourself and ruin it for others (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35816198/ns/technology_and_science-security/).

———-
Stephen Elkham appeared in the Defenestration office one day when Amber forgot to shut a window after closing up. In a bizarre twist of irony, Stephen actually joined Defenestration through infenestration…and a ladder. Genevieve, Andrew, Eileen, and even Ben Franklin all tried to shoo him out with various methods (Ben tried logic and reason, Eileen tried magic wardings, Genevieve tried verbal lashings, and Andrew merely whacked at him with a rolled up newspaper) while Bigfoot stood back and laughed his ass off. However, Stephen barely acknowledged any of them while creepily staring at the wall and sipping coffee. Soon after, that room was converted into the “Creepy Staring Guy With Coffee” room, and was mostly used for storage. One day, while moving some old equipment back there, Haratron had serendipitously stored a typewriter in front of Stephen. It wasn’t until a few days later that Eileen noticed that the “CSGWC” room was suddenly alive with the ticking of typewriter activity, and suddenly full of papers (one of them was the complete version of Hamlet all in caps, another was hundreds of pages with nothing more than “All werk n no plai, mayks Jack a LOLboi kthx,” and yet another was a scathing review on Jane Austen and how the Bronte sisters should’ve ganged up and shanked her via a time machine). It was clear the creepy guy had some sapience… plus there was now a seemingly endless source of material that could be added to the website (Jersey Devil was charged with filtering though and scanning in all the documents). Stephen is still referred to as CSGWC though…

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