There’s a terrific article by Scott Brown in the November issue of Wired Magazine titled, “I’ll Be There 4 U”.
Brown says:
Thanks to Facebook, I never lose touch with anyone. And that, my Friend, is a problem…we’ve lost our right to lose touch….We scrawl “Friends Forever” in yearbooks, but we quietly realize, with relief, that some bonds are meant to be shed, like snakeskin or a Showtime subscription. It’s nature’s way of allowing you to change, adapt, evolve, or devolve as you wish—and freeing you from the exhaustion of multifront friend maintenance. Fine, you can “Remove Friend,” but what kind of asshole actually does that? Deletion is scary—and, we’re told, unnecessary in the Petabyte Age. That’s what made good old-fashioned losing touch so wonderful—friendships, like long-forgotten photos and mixtapes, would distort and slowly whistle into oblivion, quite naturally, nothing personal. It was sweet and sad and, though you’d rarely admit it, necessary.
It builds on a post I wrote back in May, “Rejection: Painful But Inevitable on Facebook and LinkedIn”. In this post, I asked:
When will we become liberated enough to say, ‘I’m respectfully declining your friendship’ or ‘Thanks for the invite, but I don’t want to include you in my LinkedIn professional constellation of contacts’? I surmise the time is closer than you might think. We’re all getting inundated with inputs and feeds and grasping for simplicity in our daily lives. Less will become more in the world of social media and our friendships and contacts will be culled to represent only the people we like, respect and value. My parting words of wisdom…liberate yourself by creating micro-community friendships and business contacts today.
It is a curious question — how does one curate friendships online? How to intuitively know when it’s time to say, ‘Hello!’ and also when it’s time to fade to black.
I’d love to continue the dialogue here. What do you think?
Stumble It!
Brad, does this mean it is not ok to send you an invite on facebook?? Lol:) It is so funny you should write this. I caved and joined facebook 2 days ago primarily to find a long lost friend from college, that I actually wanted to talk to. Now everytime I sign into email I have 18 new friend requests. The worst part is they aren’t even people I know. But then I did find friends in other parts of the world that just out of expense or time zone difference can be difficult to keep up with. So I guess there are good and bad sides to it such as everything in life, and I personally have no qualms about rejecting people!!!!! Thanks but no thanks:)
i think there are many reasons why people choose not to add or to delete. so it doesn’t just boil down to whether or not you respect a person, like them, value etc. there are some people you just prefer to keep at a distance or leave it up to fate as to whether or not you ‘see’ them. facebook could allow people to just store friend’s email addresses, website url’s and phone numbers so you can access them when needed vs. having to see all the pictures, status updates and news.
Thanks for the feedback. I couldn’t agree more. The point here is that we haven’t yet evolved to a place where we feel comfortable saying things in a social media context that we would otherwise say in the terrestrial world. There must be a gentle way through a future FB app to make someone an ‘acquaintance’ or create a series of events online where two people get reacquainted with each other.
i think there is the element of ‘overly public’ that is still a new thing for people. it’s like everyone’s life becomes an open book.
some people have a couple of profiles, one for their main page and then one for a more personal network of friends who they share a different type of info with. wait, did i read that on this blog? i can see why this makes sense and solves some issues, but how much more time consuming do we want to make all of it. (i have three myspace pages.)
info such as events one is attending, musicians one follows, artists one likes etc… and group pages… is something i prefer to only share with people who ask directly and if they are among the people in my day to day life. the fb settings are not geared for this issue. this may sound off topic from your original point, but to me it relates back to the issue of who i would decide not to friend or perhaps delete.
My own personal (and I believe “forward thinking”) solution to this is being “completely” open on most social networks and then building your own personal “micro-communities” for balance.
I’m sure the problem most people have with the being completely open part is that… there are obvious negative side effects to that. Most people want to keep their corporate and personal life separated. I believe what we’re just around the corner from is a complete merging of the two.
Same goes for online and offline life. People like to keep them separate, but… That’s coming together as well.
The current pack of people with deep pockets and “running things” are guys who grew up in a world totally different than “ours.”
Currently not having a Facebook page is a wise move. Look 10 years out and not having a Facebook page/presence will be the difference between landing and not landing a job.
People need to realize where we’re going. EVERYTHING will be recorded practically everywhere at all times (eventually…) No one will be able to hide. You don’t need a Facebook page to be on Facebook. If someone videos/takes a photo with you in it and tags you: BOOM. Intimately understanding this leaves us with two options. A: Get comfortable with the idea of other people knowing about the “stupid” things you do, or B: Don’t do them…
Woah. I got way off topic and pretty much wrote myself a blog post. I don’t talk about these points much, so it felt good getting them out.
Back to the subject at hand though, the conventions for managing internet friendships are still in the works. I accept everyone and them organize them into groups.
My experience : I wanted to talk with someone on facebook. –> ask for friendship –> Blocked ! How can we communicated ? Maybe with google. It is the last chance. And it works. It makes it funny