Random Thought Of The Day #405

Day 405

In this modern day of social networking, mobile networking, and every other way that we keep connected to friends and family, it seems everyone knows what everyone else is doing and who they're friends with or connected to with their social media. It doesn't matter if it's Facebook or FetLife. If it's Twitter or Foursquare or anything else. We stay connected to each other by "friending" one another somewhere.

And it seems like I always hear people talking about how this person or that person "de-friended" them on whatever social networking site it is... and apparently it's a big deal in a lot of cases. It's some sort of signifier that the friendship or relationship or connection is otherwise now over. I often hear, with a hint of bitterness in their voice that "so-and-so de-friended me! Asshole/Bitch! What did I do to them?" or "oh, yeah, we're not facebook friends anymore" or something else along those lines.

What I'm getting at with this little meandering diatribe is this:

We seem to so closely identify our friendships based on our social media anymore. Our social media and our actual social lives are now inexplicably tied together. If a friendship/connection ends on Facebook/Fetlife/Twitter, it's over in real-time as well, it seems. And vise-versa.

Ignoring the obvious questions about why we feel compelled to make our internet lives and real lives one in the same or the public nature of throwing our interpersonal drama out there for mass consumption by other "facebook/fetlife/twitter-Friends" or why we take the internet that seriously or any of that stuff... I have one simple question..

How the fuck do you people even remember everyone that's on your friends list to NOTICE A)when  you've been de-friended, B) by whom you were defriended C) why you care?

I think I know how many friends I have on fetlife ... I honestly haven't the slightest clue how many I have on Facebook or how many followers I have on twitter... but outside of about a dozen people on each service that I actually hang out with or talk to regularly... I wouldn't be able to tell you who de-friended me without an extensive search thru my friends list now as well as my memory to figure out "were we friend? who isn't on this list that I thought should be?" before finally giving up and saying "fuck it, I'm gonna go eat a sandwich instead"...

Maybe it's because I border on narcissism and and sociopathy, or maybe it's because I have a bad memory or maybe it's because, outside of the occasional party or random chance, I don't talk to or see them and it's an "out of sight, out of mind" situation... or maybe it's beacuse I haven't seen a large number of them since highschool and really really just don't care... but outside of about a dozen or so people on each of my Friends Lists, I probably couldn't name 30% of them off the top of my head.

So seriously... am I just (honestly, surprisingly) not that into my social media enough? or do other people just REALLY spend the time to remember who their social-media friends are? Cause it's not like my Friends Lists are terribly extensive... I have less than 100 on Fetlife, less than 200 on Facebook, and less than 50 followers on Twitter (I actually had to stop typing this and look all those up just now to know... though I do regularly delete follow-bots on Twitter and only recently made my twats public... so that might have something to do with it)... but I guarantee that, outside of a dozen or so on each... I probably wouldn't notice if I lost a couple and definitely wouldn't know who the fuck it was that I DID lose.