[wufoo username=”torontostandard” formhash=”z7x3k1″ autoresize=”true” height=”456″ header=”show”]
Note: This questions has been edited down from the size of a short novel for the sake of casual readership. I have a particular friend – we’ve known each other for years.
We met through mutual friends and have spent several hours doing girl talk sorts of things, going out to lunch, bitching about guys. Basically all of that stuff one generally loves to do with one’s female companions. She was a mutual friend of my brother’s now ex-girlfriend, and since then I haven’t seen as much of her as we did before. That happens. There’s always fallout, but we still talked, invited each other to things, etc. A few months ago, I went to a charity thing she was throwing and dragged my friends along, just make sure her group made money. I was broke, but I went anyway. Not that she knew that, but the point is this: I was there because it was important to her. That’s what friends do, no? Some time within the last month, I noticed she deleted me from Facebook. I’m not sure exactly when. It didn’t seem to be in correlation with anything (that I can recall) This, of course, is a pretty clear indication she has no intention of contacting me/speaking to me in the future. I suppose might have to resign myself to the fact that some people are shitty – and may eventually reveal themselves as shitty friends.
—Initiate De-friending Sequence
Hello, Initiate De-friending Sequence. If there is one thing Facebook is good for — besides bringing to light the disparity between peoples’ online and offline personalities — it’s blurring the line between friends and acquaintances. The line is so blurry, in fact, that some people receive accolades for their achievements (um, birthdays) from people they have only met once, or people they have merely nodded at through a crowd of revelers at a secret warehouse party. Though it doesn’t seem like any of that is going to change soon, you certainly have the power to decide how emotionally affected you are when you find out someone has deleted you from their list of friends — which, we both know could be more acccurately described as a list made up of mostly acquaintances. Sure, everyone has most of their real-life, real-good friends as contacts on facebook, but none of those people would delete you without you knowing why.
When I was in grade six my body went bonkers. I don’t know if what I am about to explain is scientifically possible, but to this day it is exactly how I remember it. One morning I woke up in such excruciating pain throughout my body that I couldn’t get out of bed. “Mom, I can’t move!” I probably yelled down the stairs from my bedroom. “Get out of bed you lazy brat, or I’ll come up there and make you wish you were never born,” my slave-driving mother probably answered. But I actually couldn’t move. It was later decided by a doctor that I had gone through a growth spurt, which lasted close to two weeks, and if my memory serves, saw me grow close to a foot taller. The more I think about that, the more impossible it seems, but the point is that I missed two weeks of school.
When I returned to the schoolyard, an emissary from my group of friends named Greg (I have changed his name for fear that the real person — who is on my Facebook aquaintance list — will read this and engage me in one of those apologizing-for-being-a-bully phone calls) approached me with a message: “Kirk, I hate to inform you of this, but you are no longer a member of the cool playground group.”
“Ha!” I thought. “This little son-of-a-gun wasn’t a high-ranking member of the group two weeks ago. He doesn’t have that kind of power!” But it was true. I soon realized the group had officially shunned me because they threw sticks at me and told me to get lost. I was deleted from a playground friends list by a little weasel in a Georgetown Hoyas jacket, and before that, I considered that weasel a friend. After the incident, it became clear to me who my real friends were: the dorks. And needless to say, I’ve hung out with the dorks ever since.
It’s pretty sad, Initiate De-friending Sequence, but sometimes it turns out that the people you thought you were friends with turn out to be completely socially inept morons who have lost touch with how reality works. You might want to try adding her again with this message: “Hey, I think I deleted you by accident! Woops!”
____
Kirk Heron is Toronto Standard‘s advice columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @ohnowhattodo.
For more, follow us on Twitter at @TorontoStandard and subscribe to our newsletter.
