unfriend

My daughter ‘un-friended’ me, on Facebook! She did not mean it. It was an ‘experiment’ between us.

We were both on ‘Facebook’ yesterday evening, browsing through the updates of various ‘friends’ of hers and mine. She noticed that among her ‘friends’, there was one that she could not recognize. I looked at it and said it was one of my old ‘friends’.

‘Can I unfriend him?’ my daughter asked me. ‘I guess you can’, I responded. ‘Would that be good?’ she followed. ‘Well, I don’t know. I suppose if the ‘friend’ knows that we ‘unfriended’ him, he may feel hurt’ I said. We both agreed.

It’s kind of easy to ‘add’ friends on Facebook. People don’t even have to ‘make’ friends in the traditional sense. However, in this virtual Facebook world, we simply ‘add’ friends. The number of friends can go up significantly in a number of days, but are we really ‘friends’?!

I used to know that there are ‘best’ friends, but there are also ‘guest’ friends and ‘pest’ friends (in traditional terms, ‘pest’ friends can be ‘enemies’). I reckon most of the ‘Facebook’ friends are ‘guest’ friends. There can be ‘best’ friends there, but they would not let other ‘friends’ know explicitly that they are ‘best’ friends. People show certain aspects of their friendship, but as the name of Facebook indicates, it’s kind of ‘friendship’ at the ‘Face’ level, or on the surface. On the other hand, Facebook is also a co-authored ‘Book’, or an autobiography among ‘friends’ as an outcome of daily teamwork. Some enjoy writing it, while others simply read it, or leave it as it is and occasionally come back for a read or an update. Facebook is also a tailor-made ‘book’, as my daughter’s ‘Facebook’ looks different from mine, in the same way as in real life that we have different friends, and live in different world, although we also have mutual friends and an overlapping world.

So, my daughter logged in her Facebook account, and she asked if I would mind if she ‘unfriended’ me. She was a bit hesitant, and said she could add me back again. I knew what she meant, and smiled at her, saying ‘why not?’ It was just an ‘experiment’. She then ‘unfriended’ me, and I was ‘unfriended’. We were both curious how it would look like in my Facebook. So she logged out her account, and I logged in mine.

To our mutual relief, there was not an explicit post or an update or anything saying ‘Mary has ‘unfriended’ Marc’. We both laughed. However, we did notice that the number of my ‘friends’ dropped from 201 to 200, and we assumed that her ‘friends’ number would also drop by 1. So, the result of the ‘experiment’ shows that unfriending a friend on Facebook is as easy and straightforward as a piece of cake. But is it that simple?!

My daughter asked me, ‘Shall I add you now as a ‘friend?’ I responded jokingly by saying ‘You can, but then I may consider whether I would ‘accept’ you again as my ‘friend’’. I said so, but I know, deep in my heart, whenever or under whatever circumstances, if she ‘adds’ me as a friend, I would always ‘accept’ her. We are indeed, not just a father and a daughter, but the most trusted and lasting friends in both real and virtual worlds.

It was an experiment on how to ‘unfriend’ a friend. I was pleased my daughter chose me to ‘unfriend’, as she certainly took me as one of her most ‘trusted’ friends. She would not ‘unfriend’ me in reality, I know, but she did it on ‘Facebook’.

Note: ‘Unfriend’ was named the ‘Word of the Year’ in 2009.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/11/17/us-words-unfriend-idUSTRE5AG09H20091117