I have periodically culled my Facebook friends list, and I'm not alone...I see people culling their lists all of the time. But I have an "issue" with my current Facebook friends list that I find both challenging and intriguing.
Facebook is such an interesting reality. It brings to the surface every single invisible aspect of human relationships...every single one. Except in Facebook, we are more aware and in control of these usually invisible social cues.
In real life relationships we don't ask people if they want to be friends, and we certainly don't maintain a list of our friends...lol. But Facebook (as a reality portal) does give us a lot of power in establishing and maintainong boudaries with our friends.
Every single person has their own way of organizing their friends list.
As for me, I have three tiers of boundaries...close friends...friends..
and public friends. The people who are designated as public friends are "restricted" so that they can only view what I've posted for public viewing. It's the same information that anyone (friend or not) can view.
So I've recently culled people who (for whatever reason on their part) asked to join my lost of friends, but never post, and never respond to anything that I post. But I have a small group of FBpeeps that I've been having to process what to do with them.
However, to simply delete some FB people (by the nature of relationship in the "real" world) creates a "political" issue for me. What I mean by that is simply there could be social consequences to delete them, even though I may want to.
I love the way the overt nature of managing FB friends list mirrors the struggle that I have managing my friendships in the real world!
What I find intriguing about this personal dilemma is that I don't know why it's even an issue. These "friends" are already restricted to what I post for public viewing, so deleting them will not change what information they could view about me and my personal life. And I could "unfollow" them if I wanted to, so I wouldn't even need to see what they post. Yet I struggle with what to do with the small population of my FB friends who have requested to be my friend, but do not ever "like" or respond to what I post, even though I regularly "like" and comment on what they post.
I don't know what to do with this collection of the one-sided friendships!
The question that I grapple with is this: If I am interested enough in these people to respond to their life, what does it matter to me if they do not "like" or respond to me? Honestly, why would I delete someone that I actually like, simply because they do not like me? lol...FB is crazy for what it brings to the surface of the relationship table!
I remember one person in particular back in grad school who just did NOT likr me...but I adored him (non-romantically adored him). I would see him and be filled with joy, so I would say hello, and he would just grunt or say nothing. And I made a conscious choice to let him feel whatever he felt about me, but also to not let that influence the way that I genuinely felt about him. Eventually we came to be friends...which is not really the point, because my warmth toward him had nothing at all to do with a hopeful outcome, but had everything to do with me being true to what was real for me.
So I am struggling with cull decisions for people who don't like me....lol...but for whatever reason also don't unfriend me. It's my own choices that I have to grapple with, of course, and not someone else's.
I don't know yet what I'm going to do, but for now I will continue to let my dilemma shed light on my personal process. But before I allow myself to delete these friends I need to justify to myself why would I unfriend someone that I actually like, just because they don't like me.