Everyone always says, “If you don’t like something a person says on Twitter/Facebook, just unfollow/unfriend them.” I’ve also found it to be common for people to put “if you don’t like this, get off my page/status” at the end of their posts on social media. Okay, I’ll unfollow them, but what am I supposed to say when they ask me (most of the time in an awkward face-to-face conversation) why I did that? We talked a little about this in class, and I picked up on two major arguments. “I unfollow them because they document the major happenings in their lives (that I don't care about),” Kristin suggested. Marriages and babies seem to be the most common happenings that appear on my social media feeds. On the other hand, “we’ll all do the same thing one day,” Gaitry said. So, what’s the right answer?
Better yet, instead of finding the right answer, we should create a formula that tells us who to delete and lets those who we unfriend/unfollow know what happened. There may not be a formula, but according to this article from The Guardian, it is an art, and it involves recognizing people as “clutter.”
“There are Facebook friends with whom you want to share everything, those you've grown apart from, and those you've barely heard of. (You can assign them to different lists, but then you've introduced a whole new layer of decisions: who belongs where? What qualifies someone to be switched from one list to another? And so on.) There are Twitter followers with whom your acquaintance is strictly professional, those you know from school, but didn't necessarily like, and those who are your dad. Not long ago, I realised, with a feeling of dismay, that I'd started to think of some of these contacts – not most of them, but some – as clutter.”
The author later includes advice about decluttering your social media feeds, and it’s a pretty bold move.
“Mullany recommends a friend-decluttering exercise that she admits sounds ‘weird’, but that she predicts will become more and more widely accepted. She advises making a public proclamation on Facebook in which you specify the criteria by which you'll henceforth be defining people as ‘friends’. Maybe you'll resolve only to remain Facebook friends with people you've met at least once in real life, or maybe you'll use a stricter standard, such as whether you'd invite that person to your wedding. Explain, in the same proclamation, that the consequent defriending shouldn't be taken personally, and that you're doing it to a number of people at once. Then start clearing out the clutter.”
Oh, and one more thing. You can always use the criteria set forth in this list to determine if your Facebook friends will make the cut. Honestly, this is the list I’ve been searching for. So, before you ask me why I unfollowed you on Twitter or defriended you on Facebook, check to see if you did something in this article.
“Increasingly, Mullany argues, social media will force us to evaluate our friendships in this way – to take stock of our connections, so as to reserve our energies for those who matter most. She equates this to drawing up the guest list for a wedding: ‘It's stressful but, for many people, making that list is a really important, meaningful moment.’”
Unfortunately, even if I unfollow you on Twitter, I’ll probably still have to invite you to my wedding.
P.S. I encourage everyone to read the two articles I linked to above. The first is interesting and informational, and the second is hilariously accurate.