Good Grief FB!

This whole Facebook thing is interesting to me.  I don't know any official etiquette, or if there is any established out there, but I have apparently mastered offending people. 

Back around Christmas I decided that I was going to spend less time on Facebook and was having a hard time keeping up with my real friends and family because my feed was filled with a ton of stuff, mostly updates from the game Farmville.  I stopped playing Farmville and blocked the application so that stopped all of that extra clutter from that.  I also decided to thin down my friend list.

Like most people I have various groups of friends from different facets of my life, as of today I have 215 on there.  I have my family, high school friends, college friends, my husband's friends, his family, sorority friends from both my chapter and the national sorority, friends from the WebMD pregnancy/parenting boards, moms of Austin's daycare friends, and local friends.  I also ended up adding quite a few people who were friends of friends that played FV, so I did not know them at all.  I think at the highest I had nearly 250 friends.

In making the cuts I definitely deleted all the people who were FV only acquaintances, and I used up the rest of my FV cash to send them a parting gift.  I also went through the ladies from WebMD and deleted the ones who have not posted over there in months and kept only the ones that are still active there, or that I blog with.  Soon after I made the cuts I got a message from one of the FV people asking why I deleted her, that even though I was no longer playing FV we should still be friends.  She is the mom of a girl who is in my sorority.  I have never actually met the sorority sister, she is about five years younger than me, and I sure as heck don't really know her mom. Today I got an email today from one of the WebMD ladies asking why I deleted her and did anyone put me up to it.  I would never go to a public chat board and listen to someone say I should un-friend someone for their involvement in a chat board, that is so elementary playground childish.

Since then I also deleted one of my cousins.  We have never been close and she is a staunch conservative who on several occasion bashed those who are not strictly conservative on FB.  I think that politics are personal, and I don't really discuss my political views, but would generally say that am very much centrist minded and don't condone anyone who thinks their views are the "right" ones and that everyone else should be put down for their beliefs whether they are conservative or liberal.  Last week she re-friend requested me.  I re-added her, but now I regret it.

And a few months after Austin was born I was making frequent status updates about his developmental milestones.  None of our families live near us, so it was a great way to keep them up with Austin's progress.  To one of my posts a guy from high school made a negative comment about me having OCD about my son.  I of course deleted him and his rude comment.  A couple of months ago he re-friend requested me and sent a personal message saying he hadn't seen me or my mom in years and was wondering how we were. 

Maybe it is just me, but I don't think I would even know if someone deleted me as a friend.  I did have a girl from the tribe I work for delete me, but she also worked for me and I can understand the awkwardness of having your boss on there.  I really can't imagine that if I discovered someone who barely knew me deleted me, it would cause me any grief, and I definitely would not re-friend request them.  I think I will be more careful and selective about who I allow into my FB inner circle from now on!