The Unfriended

If you've been using social media long enough, you have most likely experienced this.  You have a connection with someone you met in either real life or online.  Things go well for so many years.  You see their posts in your news feed once in a while.  Then at some point, without really thinking about it at first, you realise that you haven't heard from them for some time.  Concerned for your friend's well-being, you decide to look at their profile to see if they're OK.  To your surprise - depending on their account settings - you see they have indeed shared posts in recent days/hours, but only ones set for public viewing.  Then moments later, you realise as your eyes move towards a particular area of their profile page (it may differ depending on which social media platform you're on), the truth is staring at you in the face - the "Add Friend" button has returned.

 

By this time you begin to hear Take That playing in your head.  "Whatever I said, whatever I did, I didn't mean it.  I just want you back for good."

But your mind also very soon starts to think about how offended you are that someone you thought was fairly close (in some cases) would decide to ditch you without saying why.  You begin to contemplate some of the most recent posts you shared and whether it may have triggered something.  In the end, you're never really sure if that's what happened though, because you don't know when they decided to unfriend you in the first place.  If it was a post you shared, it could've been days, weeks or even months ago, and I know you're not going to spend the next few hours going back on the posts you shared that far back, just for the sake of figuring out what went wrong.  So, you're now left with a choice between 2 options:

1. Confront them.  Send a message to them in private.  It's not like you can comment on their posts anyway (some profiles may have public posts, but the ability to comment can be limiting if it's for friends only).  Now, this option could go either way.  On the optimistic side, you might actually come to an understanding of what happened.  And who knows?  You might actually convince them to reconnect with you.  Maybe it was a misunderstanding on their part and they made a decision without thinking about it, or even talking to you about it in the first place.  In which case, it's on them.  Communication is a very important part of a friendship, people.  Start talking!  But on the pessimistic side, however, it could open a very messy can of worms.  Maybe there was a big issue there somewhere, and instead of resolving it, it makes things worse.  It's not very common that it goes in this direction though.  If anything negative were to happen as a result of your approach, the worst that could happen is that you don't get a response - or maybe they decide to block you (if their profile seems to have disappeared at this point, this is a sign that they've gone that far).

2. Let it slide.  In a lot of cases, sometimes it's probably for the best that you let it remain a mystery and leave them alone.  If you've taken the time to weigh the pros and cons of confronting them, you may have come to this decision for the sake of not coming across as pushy and demanding.  If you know your friends well enough, you may be able to name a few who might read too much into things, and if those friends have unfriended you, you probably agree that they might react that way.  So, the best thing to do in this case is to just step back.  You never know, they might (and that's a big might) decide to send you a friend request in the future.  Maybe they just needed to cool off for a bit?  We don't know everything our friends are going through, no matter how much they may post online.  Social media has a reputation of people who overshare, but believe it or not, those who are notorious of this behaviour do still have their own secrets.

You're probably wondering why I'm talking about this subject.  Why does it matter to me so much?  It's simple.  I've been at the receiving end of the dreaded unfriending without warning.  More than once.

I'm not going to be outing anyone here, but I am hoping that if those who have unfriended me for whatever reason sees this post, maybe it'll get them to think about their actions.  To make sure that they know it's them if they do see this blog post, I will share a few experiences of my own regarding this topic.  Experiences that are somewhat unique to those people.  They were there at the other end of the conversation, so they should know if what I'm about to share is to do with them or not, even though I'm making them anonymous.

Case #1

This person was somebody I met in my final year of high school.  I was in my final year, they were in their first.  It was an interesting introduction.  Long story short, we found we had a mutual love for the TV series, "The Young Ones".  After I left high school, we reconnected a few years later through a now defunct website called OldFriends.co.nz.  We interacted via e-mail from time to time for years to follow, until we discovered social media, gradually joining a number of them until we found Facebook and Instagram.

Fast forward to sometime in the past couple years or so.  There was something I wanted to share with them that I thought they might like (probably something Young Ones related), only to find that their Facebook profile had seemingly vanished.  However, I did notice their Instagram page was still there, so I decided to send them a private message, simply stating that I hadn't seen them on FB in a while.  Moments later, it seemed that my ability to message them had also gone AWOL.  Soon after this, her husband - whom I had also been connected with on FB - sent me a message through FB Messenger.

Long story short, the reason for her removing our connection and eventual blocking was because she misinterpreted my actions on FB.  Those actions?  Liking a lot of her posts/photos she shared.  She thought I was doing it a lot in a short space of time.  In reality, I only like a post I enjoy if it pops up in my news feed.  I don't go to people's profiles and "like bomb" their notifications.  That's not how I do things.  If I were on the receiving end of someone who actually does that, I'd get annoyed too.  So, why would I go ahead and do what I wouldn't wish to receive?  The truth is that I only ever liked her posts as they appeared in my news feed.  It's not my fault if many of them came up within a short space of time.  Maybe she shouldn't have posted so much?  Either way, she misread this as me being a FB stalker, which is bollocks.  We were connected with each other for a little more than 20 years(!!!) before this happened.  Why would I start behaving like that all of a sudden?  And to top it off, why didn't she just talk to me about it instead of triggering the need to get her husband to speak for her?  I repeat what I said earlier - communication is important!

Because of all of this, I ended up blocking her husband after trying to get my side of the story through to them.  So, thanks to her misinterpretation and poor decision making, I lost 2 friends that day.  The thing I hate the most about it though is that I can't look at her name or school photo in the yearbook we share without getting a little angry.  It seems this particular situation offended me deeply, like I had been betrayed or something, and all because of a little misunderstanding that could've been resolved if she had just talked to me in a civil manner.  If you want my interpretation of this, all it shows is that she may have some insecurities of her own to deal with, and if you're the person I'm talking about (based on the unique details I've shared), I'd take that into consideration before you end up taking it out on another innocent bystander.

Case #2

This one won't be as detailed as the previous one, I promise.  If anything, that one was the big kahuna of all the unfriending situations I've experienced in recent years.  The next one won't be as big a case.

I met this person at a small gathering I went to sometime in 2019, not too long before the pandemic hit.  This event was with some people I was already a friend of by this time, and they had some people attending that I hadn't met before.  So, a connection with potential new friends was possible.  And that's what happened.  This one person in particular was someone I teamed up with while playing a particular game (it was a dinner and board games kind of event).  Thinking they seemed like a fun person, I decided to add them on FB after I went home.

Jump forward to the first few weeks/months of NZ first going into lockdown in 2020.  At some point I discovered that they had unfriended me after only a few months.  I decided to approach them in private, using a polite manner, etc, asking if I had said something wrong.  Their answer was something along the lines of them "not knowing me very well".  So I decided to be nice about it and left the conversation with a response like, "I understand.  Perhaps another time in the future."  Deep down, however, my mind was screaming at them - "Well, isn't Facebook one of the ways to get to know somebody better, especially during a lockdown?"  I still stand by those words 2 years later.  If you can't connect in person, how else are you going to get to know someone other than social media?

Case #3 & #4

Because this blog has gone for so long, I'm going to end on 2 former friends that know each other (online only).  I'll try and keep this one short.

In my early days of having my own personal Internet connection (when I moved into my own home in the year 2000), I met both of these people in a now defunct chatroom called Excite (a.k.a. VP or Virtual Places).  The first (Case #3) was a girl from Melbourne, Australia, and they introduced me to the second (Case #4), a girl from the US state of Indiana.  These would be my first 2 online friends that I would never meet in person, and the only 2 to stay connected with me for close to 2 decades.

The fall of Case #1's friendship with me wasn't actually a discovery like the others in this blog entry.  This fallout took place as a result of political differences (seriously, people, don't let politics get in the way of your livelihood).  I don't know the full details, but they seemed to have taken it all too personally about what was going on between NZ and Australia in the first few months of the lockdown in 2020.  There were a few posts I shared about what the NZ government was doing, etc, but at one point, Case #1 commented on it in a way that seemed like it could trigger a political argument.  If not with me, one of my other friends, maybe.  I don't like these arguments, so in an attempt to prevent it from starting a flame war in the comments of one of my posts and endless notifications (which can be annoying, by the way), I removed her comment altogether.  I'm not sure how many times I did this, but it can't be any more than 2 occasions.  It might have been just the once, but I don't remember that far back.  Either way, this led to her sending me a rather fired-up message in private about it.  Not being in the mood to respond to a message of that nature at the time, I deleted it from my end of the Messenger conversation instead.  I'm not sure if she knew or not, but it wasn't long after this that she unfriended and blocked me.

All of that took place only a few months before we were to acknowledge the fact that our friendship was approaching the 20-year mark.  The fact that she let politics destroy the bond that we had offended me quite deeply.  So, if this story is about you and you can see this, you need to grow up.  Why let the governmental system make such an impact on your friendships like that?  What my government does has nothing to do with me as a person.  Get over yourself!

As for Case #4, this was completely out of the blue.  Our friendship lasted longer than Case #3 (obviously), but in the past year or so she decided to vanish also.  No blocking though, just the lack of connection.  It sucks because we do have some good memories.  In fact, we share a musical collaboration together.  So, if you are also out there reading this, I'm not going to make the first move this time, like I have done with others in the past.  I would like to know what made you decide to do that, but I'm not going to do that on social media.  If you see this, you know how to get hold of me in private.

So yeah, I'll wrap this up now.  I think we can all agree that there's too much misunderstanding in this world, and lack of communication is one of the key reasons why it's happening on such a large scale.

Duckman's final thought - start talking.  I will use the title of my latest n-Somnia EP as a word of advice: "Stop Fighting, Start Writing".