Are You Gonna Eat That?

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – “Unfriend” has been named the word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary, chosen from a list of finalists with a tech-savvy bent.

Unfriend was defined as a verb that means to remove someone as a “friend” on a social networking site such as Facebook.

“It has both currency and potential longevity,” said Christine Lindberg, senior lexicographer for Oxford’s U.S. dictionary program, in a statement.

“In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year.”

Is that not one of the most ridiculous things ever? The bit that cracks me up is the business about, “currency and potential longevity.” Are they serious? “Unfriend” has a longevity quotient on par with, for instance, “dehumanize?”

The reason I bring this up now when this is last month’s news is because I was apparently “unfriended” recently on Facebook. I really have no idea when. The other day I glanced to the side of my page and noticed I had 139 friends. Last night when I was scrolling down to reply in a thread I noticed it was 138. Out of morbid curiosity I opened my friends list and peered around.

I have no idea who dumped me.

Does that tell you anything? Judging by the fact that I didn’t clutch my hand to my chest and gasp, “OH NOES! So and so doesn’t love me anymore!” I would assume that whomever removed me from their list was no one who really means a whole lot in my life; maybe even someone I had friended so as not to hurt their feelings. All of my relatives are present and accounted for. All of my “real life” friends are as well. So I sat there last night wondering if it makes me a shmuck not to know or even really care who it was.

Because I really don’t care. The other day when I noticed I was at 139 I thought it was ridiculous. I don’t literally “know” 139 people. Many of them are online contacts from message boards I’ve been on. Over the course of the last few weeks I’ve been exceptionally busy with our move and getting things set up. I’ve been dealing with a teething infant and a toddler who was coming apart due to the multitude of transitions required of her over the past year. On more than one occasion I’ve taken a moment to refresh the “Live Feed” on my page, and there have been over 300 new postings. Forget it. That kind of clamor is insane. I had actually been trying to figure out who I could eliminate or at least “hide” without looking like an asshole. This is at “only” 139. One of my relatives has over 500 “friends” on Facebook. No offense if you actually do, but who literally knows over 500 people?

I understand having many contacts if you’re using the site for networking purposes. Most people I know are not. I don’t even approve people I don’t know unless they’re friends of friends. I’ve had folks with my last name all over the world request to add me, and when I click on their pages I’ve been able to tell immediately that they don’t REALLY want to know me. I guarantee they’d be scared off within 3 days, tops.

Or even 3 minutes once they click on my links.

I have a disturbing amount of friend requests waiting for me. I have no plans to approve any of them. I’m an elephant, you see, and each of those people were shits to me in a past life. Namely junior high and high school. My mother keeps telling me that people can change, and I’m sure they can. However, these friend requests were unaccompanied by any note of apology, or even so much as a, “Hey! How are you? Nice to see you.”

So I’m going to lay it out right here. You people treated me like shit. One of you threw my father’s death in my face mere weeks after he died, because I came to school one day finally wearing a pair of name brand sneakers instead of what they used to call, “Bobos.” The rest of you made my life hell because I was smarter than you and hotter than you, and you did SUCH a good job of convincing me otherwise that I still second guess decisions I make and how I look.

So I’m offering to you a blanket, “Fuck off.” I do not forgive you, I will never forgive you, and I refuse to pad your friends list for you. Maybe that makes me small. I’ll attribute it to the fact that my spine has collapsed 2 inches in the past 8 months and leave it at that.

This morning I made a decision to slash and burn my friends list. I feel no need to keep people on it when they don’t even ever contact me, reply to status updates, or even, as lame as it is, muster themselves to click “Like” on anything I post. So I opened my friends list and began pointing my mouse at the X on the sides of people’s names.

One of the first people to get canned is actually a relative, but in the months since we added each other he has never once spoken to me. We live on two different sides of every imaginable spectrum, and while I love him to death I’m sure if we ever just met by chance we wouldn’t become friends.

Gone.

I then eliminated people I met via message boards who don’t bother to speak to me anymore. I don’t honestly know why they added me in the first place, unless it’s again a padding of the friends list. So yeah, bye.

The last person I canned actually inspired emotion. I have a lot of good memories involving that particular person, but they’re pretty much overwhelmed these days by a lot of anger and bitterness. I got some of the biggest laughs in my adulthood from shit he said, but you don’t hurt people I love, and he did. In retrospect I probably should never have added him in the first place, but I did, and now I have to live with potentially hurting his feelings by dumping him.

I clicked the X anyway.

My life has been getting heavier and heavier of late, and there are days when I literally feel like Atlas. There’s shit that’s going on that I don’t even tell anyone about, because I often feel like every other word that leaves my mouth is bad news. I need to start casting things aside. Including people.

It’s not a very nice thing to do, but right now I have no room for any extraneous shit.

This includes seeing 300 new updates after only a few hours, so that I have to ignore them all rather than wade through to find information I might actually care about.

If you’re reading this, and you’re one of the people I dumped this morning, I have to let you know that I’m not sorry. I’m taking a good, long look at the people I know right now, and if you didn’t make the cut of someone that I KNOW would stand beside me fighting the zombies, well, you’re gone.

I’m sure I’ll be replaced quickly enough.