As we age, there is a natural inclination for me to embrace a ”been there/done that” attitude, mainly because in many cases I have been there and done that. But just last week I experienced an epiphany that shook me to my core: I discovered that Facebook has an “unfriend” option.
Generally speaking, Facebook annoys me for a couple of reasons, but mainly because I think the whole point is to impress perfect strangers with your vast quantity of “friends,” most of whom you have never met. In addition, I don’t see the point of reconnecting with people I have not heard from in 20 years because if they really were good friends we would not have lost contact in the first place. Moreover, I truly believe that if you gave a flock of sheep laptop computers, an Internet connection and opposable thumbs that they would be hard put to match the vapid, banal, poorly punctuated posts that appear on Facebook every minute.
But in spite of this, I check my Facebook account often, generally to get my daily dose of indignation, but then last week I read a post from my brother’s current wife who categorized people who do not share her extreme, right-wing political views as being “too stupid to live.” The phrase galled me. Was she advocating concentration camps? Death squads? Public executions? Any of these options would be possible in her world view. I envision her as a high-tech Madame Defarge, playing “World of Warcraft” at the base of the guillotine.
Just then my best friend called, and, apoplectic, I gave him a sputtering assessment of the situation. My friend asked me why I didn’t just unfriend her. I did not know this was possible, so he explained how to do it. I hesitated for just a moment but then, heart beating wildly, my brother’s current wife, no friend of mine, was officially unfriended. I felt great – empowered even, as though I had struck a blow for liberty.
It turns out, I was not alone in my reaction; others were also offended by the “too stupid to live” line, so the next day when my brother posted an angry defense of his wife, I unfriended him too, this time hesitating only briefly and with only a slight elevation in heart rate. A minute later I also unfriended their grown son, on general principle, with no hesitation at all.
My new power proved addictive , and like the Queen of Hearts shouting “Off with her head” I started looking for reasons to unfriend people. I must admit that I have never enjoyed my time on Facebook so much. In the space of a couple of days I unfriended a distant cousin whose angry political rants cross the line into “scary.” I unfriended a former colleague who wants to abolish Social Security and Medicare even though he is collecting disability payments for a trumped-up back injury. I unfriended the idiot who posted a comment about elderly parents who “live too long.” .
Mad with power, my circle of unfriends was growing geometrically to include not only people with opposing world views, and those who simply annoyed me, but their friends as well. I unfriended a co-worker whose posts infuriate me because he “doesn’t believe” in capital letters or punctuation. I unfriended a high school friend who sends out four or five posts per hour. I unfriended a college friend who has turned into one of those crazy cat ladies who spends her day posting pictures of her dozens of cats. If Facebook kept a list of “unfriends” I’m sure people would have been impressed with mine.
In the ultimate irony I was reading a post from a “friend” that I had never heard of. “Egg McMuffin for breakfast today!” said the post. “Good lord,” I thought; “such excitement!” But then I saw that 8 people “liked” the post and another 5 commented: “Fun!” said one; “Yum!” said another. “Tasty!” said a third, while a fourth, flaunting their poor language skills simply said, “J.”
Eyes narrowed, I began a systematic purge of these people from my friend list and then I saw the last comment, from a guy named Phil: “Why do you think anyone gives a fuck what you had for breakfast?” Phil asked.
“Way to go, Phil,” I thought, knowing intuitively that this was a guy I could be friends with and I immediately sent him a friend request. I’m still waiting for an answer.