Deletion Therapy

 The following column can also be found published by The Felix, the student voice of Imperial College London. On-line version here:  http://felixonline.co.uk/comment/1358/flimsy-facebook-friends/

Deleting people is a growing form of therapy. Perhaps happily, this is not the latest jargon for serial–killing, but a synonym for a re-appraisal of ‘Facebook friends’ – those people you like or love, but also those people you have to put up with commenting on status updates when you would rather they did not, or who have married and not so much as told you, even after the event. If those two categories are indistinguishable for you…oh dear.

         The fact that we use the word ‘Facebook’ as an adjective for something like friendship instantly devalues it.  Think of all those films in which friendship is a strong theme: The Dam Busters, Peter’s Friends, Bridge over the River Kwai. Quite apart from their being from the wrong age, the idea that the characters could be described as something so flimsy as ‘Facebook friends’ seems an almost perverse comparison. 

That is not to say I do not use or that I dislike Facebook ­– it is good fun. Though I must admit unless you are careful (or paranoid) about your settings, it is a way for everyone you have ever met to catch up with you.

         Problem 1 with the system is the point at which one ‘adds’ a friend. How many times have you added someone via your phone after a bottle of wine and have never really met or spoken to them since? This is also serious factor in problem 2: at what point do you remove someone? In real life both of these seem far easier: if you want to talk to someone and spend time with someone, you do. If you do not, you do not. Not deleting someone because you might want to talk to them or know them has some credence, but no more than keeping something expensive that you do not have an immediate use for but do not want to have to replace. 

         Having said that, removing someone and even blocking them can be a punishment: deletion is referred to by many as the ultimate smack–down. Fair enough, but if someone deleted me and I found myself unable recall whom they were, smack–down it would not be. However, deleting someone you see regularly is dangerous. I was once deleted by a (now ex–) colleague who had not bothered to check whom she was deleting. The awkwardness on her part was delicious, though no apology was forthcoming. I have not re–added her, nor have I accepted a friend request from her since, needless to say.

         I suppose one could restrict Facebook friendships only to those one is in regular contact with. But what would be the point of that?—one sees them regularly anyway I do know people who use Facebook only for the opposite reason – for people they never see frequently because they are overseas. Seems sensible, though if you are in different time zones and doing different things, communication for anything more than correspondence chess seems as unlikely as it is unworkable.

         For myself, I use it for a mixture of these two reasons, and much else in between, as do most of my ‘Facebook’ friends. In practice this is rather like having my friends, school friends, ex–girlfreinds, drinking pals, and my mother in the same room, with social etiquette preventing anyone from introducing themselves to anyone else. Just putting that list together has made me more concerned. The sum total is that I cannot say what I think at any given time, though who of us can, but I can get in touch with virtually anyone of my acquaintances. Well, unless I have deleted them for not knowing what not to say at parties, that is.