Cull me maybe

Call it boredom or unemployment procrastination, but I’ve decided to get a blog going. Have contemplated it for a while without actually bothering to do it - so this is me going for a bother.

My first post is probably going to sound bitter in some aspects, but it isn’t intended that way; it’s more of a ponder about the nature of friends on social networks - or, more specifically, Facebook.

Last night, for no real reason other than a general ‘I can’t take much more of job websites’ listlessness, I was browsing on Facebook for a considerable length of time, as a kind of default place to browse. I’ve been using the website for over eight years now and I’ve never decided to perform a mass culling of friends; I’ve only ever deleted the occasional individual, usually being prompted to by someone posting something I find particularly horrible - racist or homophobic messages, for example. Thankfully, these have been few and far between. But, whilst reminding myself of the list of friends I have, it hit me how without having had such a cull the website serves as a constant reminder of how people fall out, or drift apart. After looking through my timeline from the first year or two of use, it surprised me how regularly certain people I no longer speak to - or am even friends with - would still post on my wall or comment on posts; people who the closest contact I have with these days is to ignore the annual notifications of their birthdays. In that sense, it hit me how my Facebook has become a bit of a social graveyard - ”Here lies your friendship with [x], 2007-2009” - and that is clearly why I find the website an increasingly depressing experience; I just keep seeing people I no longer speak to doing things with other people. Of course, it’s not like I didn’t drift apart from people pre-Facebook and this wouldn’t have happened before, but I didn’t have constant reminders of friendships that didn’t seem to quite work out. Essentially, it’s a friendship list that’s out of date; my news feed feels a bit like people I don’t hang out with anymore repeatedly walking up to me in the street, telling me how great a time they had last night doing things that don’t involve me anymore and running off again. Obviously it’s more passive than that - unintentional, even - but it doesn’t feel all that dissimilar when seeing it on a daily basis.

This morning - because I had made a point of looking at my list of friends last night - I immediately noticed that the friend count was down by one. Being in this unusual position where I would likely be able to tell who it was (typically I don’t tend to keep track of how many friends I have), I put my social network detective skills to use, looking at the friend lists of people whom I know I have lots of mutual friends with and so on, all the while just expecting it to be someone from school or a job from years ago who I never really spoke to anyway. However, when I found out who it was, I was slightly shocked, as it was a person I’ve always tended to get on with, sharing likes and mutually posting comments more recently than many. Upon looking at the mutual friends I have with this person, I noticed how a few others seem to have been deleted as well - all the signs point to a cull. Immediately, inevitably, I thought, “What did I do?”. But, then it hit me: following what our geographical disparity is likely hinting towards, this person has merely been proactive in preventing their Facebook become what mine has - and, after the initial feeling of being a bit hurt, I find it oddly admirable. It reminded me that, even in the context of social networking, sometimes the best thing is to just accept that not everything will work out in the long term and move on before you’re just scrolling though a status graveyard every day.

So, I opened up my list of friends again, thinking, yeah, let’s do this! Let’s cull some people! I don’t speak to loads of them anyway - nothing will change except I’ll have a less depressing news feed! But…I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Even as I looked at people who I know I won’t even send a happy birthday wish to, it just didn’t seem like anyone had done any specific thing to warrant it. Even with this reasoning it still felt unjustifiably harsh somehow; too hard to change my passive rejection to an active one. Why?

Having always been something of a hoarder, it was possibly inevitable that such a trait would be carried on to a social network capacity; it’s just that, instead of a “But I had so much fun playing with all that Meccano! I can’t get rid of that and throw away the possibility of doing so again!”, it’s now a “But I used to get on so well with that person! I can’t delete them and throw away the possibility of ever speaking again!”. It seems the underlying cause hasn’t really changed at all - it’s just that the involved is no longer an inanimate object. (Although, I did always have a bit of inanimate object empathy…which might explain some of the hoarding.)

So, a cull is yet to happen, and little has changed beyond being a friend less. Admittedly, I have always been a bit rubbish at initiating conversation with people on Facebook / keeping touch in general beyond the ease of a ‘like’ here and a comment there, and I could have done a better job to prevent this from happening. I could be looking too much into this, but because of this deletion I find myself suddenly feeling more positive and closer to change; I now feel much more admiration towards those that manage to pull these culls off, even if I happen to be a victim, and I think I’m a step closer to doing it myself. It may yet take a bit more time to prepare myself mentally, but I’m getting there. The plastic sheets in those Meccano sets are probably snapped in half anyway.