Reaction to: Friends, Until I Delete You

Reaction to: Friends, Until I Delete You


Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/fashion/29facebook.html?_r=1&th&emc=th


I was sent a link to a New York Times web page in the fashion and styles section. It was an article about, nothing other than facebook! The article was about how burger king was giving away free whoppers if you did one thing for them and that thing was; delete 10 friends. As I was reading this article it started analyzing why you can and can’t delete friends! “deleting friends does not generate a notification of any sort, leaving members to discover they’ve been unfriended only when they find they no longer have access to someone’s profile.”It even sighted a book about facebook that was on the subject. Hoping that this was a sad joke I had to verify if this was a real web page or not. But it was as I feared it was real. As I finished the article it expressed several reasons on how this could be a bad thing say things such as.

“which was interesting to us because it felt like the virtual definition of a friend became something different than the friends that you’d want to hang out with.”

“It can be a jarring experience, especially considering that the person who dumped you at some point either requested you as a friend or accepted your request (on Facebook, that is how friends are made). But members understand that such selective discretion is critical to the social-networking ecosystem.”

It even went on to talk about a situation where some people got in to a fight and deleted each other and how it feels odd to add them again. After taking a step back I asked myself why do I find this so ridiculous and why do I feel like someone out there is thinking this is a ground breaking article? The first thing that came to mind was the difference between what real human interaction was and what facebook does to it. In short I feel facebook disconnects us as people and removes the responsibility of real interaction. In addition it makes the illusion of popularity. Even in this article it described someone with only 100 friends as “they’re trying to limit it to their intimates.” I look at that and asked myself what about the people that do not have facebook and have plenty of friends and do not need a social networking page? Or what about people who never log in but are known by everyone I think it is easy to say that Will Smith is popular and he doesn’t need a facebook to prove it. But the thing that got me the most was how serious deleting was taken by this article, the thoughts I have on this is; why add them if you are not going to keep them on? Another is don’t you think they would drop you if they didn’t care either? I took another step back and asked myself why do I keep a face book or would I care if I got deleted? The first answer is, to me facebook is like a digital address book that you do not need to update. And you have people there that maybe one day I will need to get a hold of them or they will need to get a hold of me from anything from going to the movies to help with Spanish or math homework and the more people you have the more resources you got and the more help you can give. And now going back to “limit it to their intimates.” What if no one you kept as an intimate can help you; do you think it is a good idea to have deleted your old roommate that was a math major when you need help now? Or what if someone had a scholarship opportunity that they knew you would be great for but can’t seem to find you on their friends list. And would I care? The answer is no if they feel like I’m not important enough then its fine. What if they deleted you for a burger? Well to that I would have to say that just add me again and tell me it is not personal I was just hungry, and we can both find ways to take burger king for as many whoppers as possible. What if it was personal? Then it goes beyond the spectrum of facebook it goes in to the real world and the factors that lead to getting deleted must have justified it. But whoever deleted me made up with me later we can add each other again, is that not what making up is all about?