The Great Facebook Purge

My profile pic, from Uncle John's Cider Mill in St. Johns, MI. I usually cycle through profile pictures pretty quick, but this one is special...

I think it’s about that time when everyone has realized how much social media has changed our lives, more importantly, how much of our lives we spend indulged in it. My mom never let me get a MySpace when they were still a massive thing back in 2006/2007, but finally in summer 2008, I took the advice of one of my best friends, and made a Facebook. I had hardly ever heard of it, only the stuff about how it was banned in work environments. Pretty soon I thought it was the coolest thing ever, and so did everyone else when they first joined…..

And we come to present day. I can’t imagine what I would do on the internet without Facebook. It takes up so much of my internet browsing, and I’ve been sick of it for a while now. It’s actually quite sad, there was one girl in particular that I know at CMU that for the longest time didn’t have a Facebook profile. Sure enough, I just found her on there about a week ago. Wow…I guess EVERYBODY I know has a facebook.

Recently I had over 500 friends on there, and believe me, I know that many have more. (Over 1,000) I decided to once and for all actually scroll through my ENTIRE list of friends of the past 3.5 years, and get rid of anybody that: 1)I didn’t talk to anymore, 2)Was someone I barely knew in high school and now was living a life somewhere else, 3)People that posted things that I had no interest in. And so it began, I turned on some China Crisis, sat down, and went to work.

It took about 5 different sittings to get through the whole thing, deleting football jocks, others who were long gone, anyone who didn’t have much relevance to me anymore. (I couldn’t believe how long it took just to get through the A’s, B’s, and C’s!) I started in the morning at 525 friends. With all that effort throughout the day to “purge” my profile, I had shaved it down to 345. 35% of friends wiped off my profile. *phew*, that took a while…I was more disappointed that I didn’t get rid of more. That still leaves me with 345 people that I know who I still talk to or see on a regular basis, I guess…

So what did I learn? I guess it’s harder to delete people than I really thought, or I just know that many people. (And knowing 345 people at least sort of well is interesting to fathom) The most interesting thing to happen after the purge? Someone re-requested me as a friend, and then posted on my wall, asking why I deleted her.

Now the intriguing part is not that she was confused why I deleted her, it was the fact that ONE person cared. One person out of 200+ would be disappointed to not get my humorous status updates, or the ones about Canada, or the links to my blog posts on here. (And I bet nobody else reads this besides those people)

So there’s an exercise for everyone to do on Facebook. Unfriend almost everybody, and see who re-friend requests you soon afterwards. Out of the people that aren’t close acquaintances or friends, those people matter too…Either way, I would love to dump my Facebook one of these days. Twitter’s where it’s at! And of course, this blog is cooler than both of them.