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Tag: Unfriend

  • If You Unfriend Someone on Facebook, They May Just Avoid You in Real Life

    For a good percentage of people, being unfriended on Facebook is a huge slap in the face. So much, in fact, that they would actively avoid running into the unfriender in real life.

    Then again, who decided that Facebook interactions don’t count as “real life?”

    The study comes from The University of Colorado Dever and Computer Science and Information Systems doctoral student Christopher Sibona. He conducted a survey via Twitter and found that 40% of people would avoid contact in real life (out in the world, not behind the computer) with anyone who happened to unfriend them on Facebook.

    50% said that they wouldn’t go out of their way to avoid outside contact, and 10% said that they might.

    According to the study, women were more likely to want to avoid IRL contact with people who unfriended them.

    The study also looked at motivating factors behind the act of avoidance.

    “The number one predictor was whether the person who said the relationship was over talked about it to someone else,” Sibona said. “Talking to someone is a public declaration that the friendship is over.”

    This isn’t the first study on “unfriending” authored by Sibona. In 2010, he found that the most common reasons that people get unfriended involve problematic posts. This includes boring life updates (just made a sandwich!), polarizing political posts, and remarks that could be viewed as sexist or racist.

    “Since it’s done online there is an air of unreality to it but in fact there are real life consequences,” said Sibona. “We are still trying to come to grips as a society on how to handle elements of social media. The etiquette is different and often quite stark.”

    News flash: Facebook is a part of the “real world” and your actions have consequences. Unfriending a person on Facebook gives the impression that you no longer care about what goes on in their life, or at least you don’t care to hear about it. Why should a person who’s received such a blast want to hang out with you in person?

    [University of Colorado Denver via CNET]

  • Send That Facebook Douche to Defriendtion with New App

    Jimmy Kimmel’s annual National Unfriend Day just occurred, so you may have already been giving your friend list a good once-over. But for those of you who think that unfriending is a little too drastic, no matter the offense, Defriendtion offers you the ability to toss your idiot Facebook friends into the spotlight of public ridicule.

    “Whether a silly or inappropriate picture, a tweet, or a status update, everyone has friends or is associated with an entity who does questionable things both online and in-person — the “culinary snapper,” the “needless quoter,” the “unnecessary hash tagger,” etc. The only way to previously express disdain for these actions, however, was by writing something in the comment section of a post, or by retweeting with commentary,” says Defriendtion.

    Well, not anymore. Now there’s an app for calling out people who make an ass of themselves on Facebook. It’s the next best thing to a dislike button, which we all know we’re never ever ever going to get.

    The app is easy to use. All you have to do is choose the offending friend and then select their Facebook crime. The app offers some generic reasons such as “Because I disagree” and “Because this is ridiculous,” but it also lets you add your own reason for defriendtion. After that, you simply choose the amount of time they’ll spend in defriendtion and post some evidence (a photo, link, or quote).

    Once you submit the form, the defriendtion slip will be posted to the offending friend’s Timeline, where it will show up on news feeds everywhere. You can even link it to Twitter to spread the shaming even more. I’m not sure if the app will catch on, but this promotional video is pretty damn funny, so there’s reason to hope:

    When you sentence someone to defriendtion, a disclaimer reads that the service is “meant to be used in good fun” and advises users to refrain from “being a bully.” Despite this, I’m sure things could get pretty ugly. When it comes to public shaming, things usually do.

    [via AllFacebook]

  • The Top 9 Reasons You’re A Terrible Facebook Friend [STUDY]

    Let’s face it: Facebook is, by default, annoying. It’s basically a platform that gives people you don’t really care about the unfettered ability to share whatever word diarrhea they want, at any time of the day. And you have to scroll through your news feed and see this garbage, all the while trying to grasp at some barely tangible hope that the world is not saturated with people that aren’t worth saving. It really is a depressing sort of sport.

    I’m sure that if you were asked to list the top 9 things that people do on Facebook that really grind your gears, you’d list 15. But thanks to a survey commissioned by Australian company Amaysim, we have a nice, clean roundup of the top actions that are likely to lead to an unfriending.

    1. Using Facebook as your diary.  42% said that this was the most annoying thing that could be done on the social network.  Before you post some trivial about your day-to-day life, remember to take the number of people you think care about your activities and divide by two.
    2. Food photography.  40% of those surveyed hate it when you incessantly post pictures of your meals, no matter how exquisite you think they are.  There’s a place filled with food photos where you’ll never be called annoying for being filled with culinary enthusiasm, and it’s called Instagram.
    3. Copious check-ins. Suzy was here.  Suzy was here with Sally.  Suzy was here with Sally and 4 other.  Stop.  I haven’t left my couch all day and you’re making me feel like a slob.  38% found this annoying.
    4. Relationship posts.   29% of those surveyed don’t want to hear about your boyfriend, girlfriend, or crush.  Also, your husband, wife, or domestic partner either.  Let’s add friend with benefit to that list as well.
    5. Game invites.  This is a no-brainer.  26% of respondents hate you when you request that they they join you in a rousing game of CityVille, and we’re surprised it’s only 26%.
    6. Inspirational Quotes.  So, Marilyn Monroe said that you need to be a girl with sass?  Albert Einstein said that Obama is a socialist?  25% of your Facebook friends are rolling their eyes.
    7. Vaguebooking. Say what you mean.  Passive aggressive updates drew the ire of 24%.
    8. Baby photos.  According to 21% of those surveyed, your baby is only cute to you.
    9. Posting terrible photos of your friends.  I know it makes you look better by comparison to be standing next to your derpy friend, but cut it out.  13% of people really hate that.

    Of course, this is in no way an all-inclusive list of crap that can get your unfriended on Facebook. But if you’re looking at ways to be a better Facebooker, it’s a good place to start.

    [via News.com.au]

  • Your Friends Hate You On Facebook For The Same Reason They Hate You In Real Life

    Sitting down at your computer for a quick round of Facebook unfriending can be a painful, satisfying, or gloriously cathartic experience. Sure, every now and then its sad to virtually delete someone from your life – especially if they once meant something to you a long time ago. Friendship is strange, and it can change in a matter of weeks or months. Facebook, of course, is far different from “real life.” There’s no way that friendships online could have the similar trajectories as friendships offline – right?

    Well, a study from Cambridge University on the “loosing of friends on Facebook” suggests that there’s really not a whole lot of difference between why relationships end on Facebook and how they end offline.

    The researchers start off by suggesting that most studies have pointed to an extreme difference in the dissolution of friendships on and offline.

    “Self-reported data seems to suggest that Facebook relationships end for reasons different than those associated with dissolution of real-life relationships. Such an assertion has, however, never been quantitatively tested,” they said.

    What they found through their analyzation of over 34,000 Facebook relationships is that the reason friends “break up” on Facebook has to do with several factors similar to why they break up offline.

    We consider 34,012 Facebook relationships and study whether their decays are impacted by the four factors (Sections “Method” and “Results”). We find that a relationship is likely to break if it is not embedded, if it is between two users with a considerable age difference, and one of the two individuals is neurotic or introvert.

    The “embedded” thing has to do with the commonality of the two people’s groups of friends. Do they run in the same circles, basically.

    The researchers also found that your Facebook friendship is more likely to survive if you share another female friend.

    “Relationship[s] between two individuals having a common female friend is more robust than that between two individuals having a common male friend”

    Not listed as a factor in friend dissolutions: annoying political statuses and a plethora of baby pictures.

    [via AllFacebook]

  • I’m Glad Facebook Doesn’t Tell Me Who Unfriended Me

    I’ve been on Facebook since the first summer I was given a University address in 2004. Yep, back in ye olde days, you had to have that .edu email address to even register. It was a good time – perhaps the best of times. No thirteen-year-olds, no parents, and no big brands, just curious (and mostly horny) college students, your occasional faculty member, and lot of posts about our bad decisions from the night before. Okay, that last part hasn’t really changed.

    But since 2004, Facebook has made a lot of changes – most of them unpopular in the beginning. Remember when everyone bitched about the news feed when it first popped up? “What the hell is this bullsh*t? Writing on walls is good enough for me!” Through the various years, redesigns and new features have been unveiled, usually with the same response: Dear Facebook, we don’t want all of this crap. You’re all aware of this – Facebook is always adding things that people don’t want (at least at first).

    But there are also things that people have wanted Facebook to implement, for years – so much so that dozens of pages and groups have been created in their honor. Stuff like the oft-discussed “dislike button” or seeing who has looked at your profile have been demanded but never realized. Despite what some spam link offers, you’re probably never going to be able to hit dislike on your obnoxious cousin’s status. Sorry guys.

    To a lesser degree, people have always wanted to be able to see when they are unfriended. Vindictiveness? Masochism? Who knows. Unfriending someone on Facebook is the ultimate in passive behavior, and the thought of catching the bastard, not letting them just unfriend you and skulk off must appeal to plenty of users.

    As we all know, Facebook has not built this feature into the core experience. There’s no native functionality, a tab or something, where users can go and see everyone who has unfriended them recently.

    But with a couple of easy steps, any Facebook user can figure it out. Back in January, I told you about a script, compatible with multiple browsers, that adds an unfriend notification system to Facebook. It’s called Unfriend Finder, and after telling you guys about it I installed it myself.

    And today, a couple of months later, I’m removing it.

    Let me be clear – this is not a knock on the extension at all. It works perfectly. Any time that someone unfriends me, I get a notification. Every time someone deactivates their account, I get a notification. If someone rejects my friend request, I get a notification. Everything works like a dream, and that’s the problem. I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to know the second someone unfriends me anymore.

    Let me explain what happened to prompt this decision…

    The sad march of rejection

    Yesterday afternoon, I received a notification on my Unfriend Finder box. I clicked with little anticipation, mostly because I really don’t give a damn if someone unfriends me on Facebook. Most of the time it’s someone I a.) strongly dislike anyway or b.) haven’t thought about in so long I forgot they even existed. Only this time, the name that I saw listed before the phrase “is no longer on your friendlist” troubled me. It actually hit me pretty hard.

    So much so, that I thought it was probably a mistake. Maybe Unfriend Finder mislabeled the update. Maybe she deactivated her profile – she wouldn’t just unfriend me. So I quickly searched for her name in Facebook’s (crappy) search box. Nope, she was still there. Then I figured that she was probably just up to some Facebook-style spring cleaning – probably eliminating a lot of people. Once again, I was wrong. Dozens upon dozens of our mutual friends remained, a testament to all of the people that she for some reason still liked more than me.

    At this point, I felt a small wave of sadness, followed by a larger wave of sadness because I was letting something as stupid as an unfriending on Facebook rile me. Let me repeat, I’ve axed and been axed by so many online friends, I couldn’t even count if I wanted to. It was something about this one, however, that made me think.

    This was a girl with whom I had shared a pretty close (100% platonic) relationship not too many years ago. Sure, lifestyle and location had weakened the friendship but we had never been on anything but good terms. Why would she unfriend me, and not my fiancé for example? I tried so hard to not give a sh*t like I’d not given a sh*t so many times in the past. But I couldn’t shake it.

    I’ll save you the long version, and give you the movie trailer cut scenes version of the next few seconds:

    1. WTF?
    2. Why now?
    3. Oh, what did I say on here the other night?
    4. God, I’m a jerk

    In a matter of seconds, I’d realized that I’d said something on Facebook that while totally innocent, must have deeply offended my now un-friend. It was the relative recency with which I’d been given the news of being unfriended. I could instantly figure out why, and it sucked.

    And while it is not in my character to care about something like this, I must say, that night’s beers were sad beers. Over a stupid, childish, insignificant little thing on stupid, childish, insignificant Facebook.

    And that’s why I’m getting rid of Unfriend Finder and I’m glad that Facebook doesn’t tell me this stuff. First, because I didn’t like feeling crappy and second, because I’m pissed off that something having to do with Facebook could actually make me feel that crappy.

    Facebook just made masochism really tempting

    While it’s no real-time unfriend notification system, Facebook has just added a little more bait for those wanting to take a self-revelatory walk down memory lane.

    Back in 2010, Facebook unveiled the option to download all your personal data. One little zip file that contains all the stuff you’ve shared on the network – including photos, wall posts, comments, messages, and even chat logs.

    Now, Facebook includes a list of all of your friend requests. After a little digging, it wouldn’t be hard to use that data to find all of the people who have rejected you throughout the years.

    In conclusion…

    Facebook has been tied to any number of things – antisocial behavior, narcissism in teenagers, mood disorders, eating disorders & distorted body images, and even depression. Of course, most of this stuff is BS. Let’s be honest, people are going to exhibit all of these things with or without Facebook. Sure, putting yourself out there online could exacerbate some of these things, but in the end do we really know which came first? The depression or the Facebooking?

    All I know is that I’ll be happy to go on blissfully ignorant regarding who thinks I’m enough of an a-hole to unfriend me.

    Losing a friend in real life is one of the most devastating things that can happen to you – and this is true whether you lose them physically or emotionally. I’m not saying that losing a friend on Facebook comes anywhere close, but oftentimes it still feels like sh*t. And sometimes it’s just better not to know.

  • How To Find Out Who Unfriended You On Facebook

    If you’re a Facebook user with a few hundred friends, it’s extremely difficult to keep track of all of them. And sometimes, you’ll be unfriended – it’s just a sad fact of life. Whether you piss someone off or simply become irrelevant to their social sphere, theres a good chance that any Facebook user will lose multiple friends every year.

    Of course, Facebook doesn’t offer an inline method to let users see when they are unfriended. But now, you can not only see a list of everyone who has unfriended you, but you can get notifications right when it happens with a new script called Unfriend Finder.

    And it’s totally legit. It’s not one of those scams that have been going around for a couple of years that end up just spamming the hell out of your friends.

    The script was created by Edouard Gatouillat and works with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari. It’ll simply install automatically on Chrome, but Firefox users will have to add-on Greasemonkey before installing it.

    When the jerk unfreinds you, you’ll get a notification within the new “Unfriends” box appearing on the top right of your Facebook page. You’ll also get a notification to the actual Facebook notification tray:

    Once you click on “unfriends,” you’ll see a list of everyone who has unfriended you:

    The script allows you to see who has deactivated their profiles, lets you manage your sent pending friend requests and it also shows you who has rejected your friend requests. It’s important to note that it’s not retroactive, meaning you won’t be able to see who unfriended you before you installed the script.

    This script allows users to do something they’ve wanted to do for a long time. Vindictiveness just received some major help.

    [Via Mashable]