Extending Douchey Behavior to Social Media

Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Is it just me, or has the advent of social media turned us into a nation of douchebags?

I'm not talking about those incredible tools who break up with their boyfriends or girlfriends via e:mail, or text message, or twitter. What I'm talking about is those people with whom you might have a somewhat casual relationship, who, for whatever reason, decide they no longer wish to be your friend.

In the bad old days before Facebook and MySpace, such a desire might be accomplished by either fading out of someone's life (i.e., not returning calls, not making plans together, etc.), or with a direct confrontation. I've used both of those strategies, depending on how close I was to the person, how often I'd see them and why I wanted to eliminate them from my life.

But in the good new days, if you decide to cut off a relationship with someone, you also have to decide what to do about the social media you have in common with the person you don't like anymore. Do you remain connected to them via Facebook, or do you just "hide" their posts? Do you "unfollow" them on Twitter? Do you change your e:mail address?

If you're the kind of person who leans towards a more passive approach to ending casual relationships, then social media is not going to work to your benefit. Eventually, the person you "unfriended" is going to realize it, and they're probably going to be pissed off if you took the coward's way out and didn't tell them your intentions ahead of time. I'm not particularly interested in being "friends" with someone who doesn't want to be "friends" with me, but I will say that if I decided to "unfriend" someone on Facebook, I would at least extend them the courtesy of telling them I was doing so, and why. Because I'm kind of a social retard, I need people to put things out there, so there's no confusion on my part, and I try to do the same for others. Not everyone feels that way, of course, but in my opinion, "unfriending" someone without telling them is pretty much a douchebag move.

I wonder, does the advent of social media give people the opportunity to extend their personal cowardice to aspects of their life that were previously immune (like breaking up with your partner on Twitter, for fuck's sake), or is it allowing people to confront those who try to sneak away from relationships like a thief in the night?

Either way, I think it's fair to say that acting like a douchebag, both online and off, is never going to go out of style. How fabulous. "When people show you who they are, believe them." If someone acts like a douche, it's probably because they're a douche. Live and learn.

4 comments:

MWT said...

Partly it depends on how you define "friend" and what you're using the social media for, I think. I have a fair number of casual acquaintances that I've added on facebook so that we can join each other's teams on various games (though I don't troll the game forums for total strangers, like some others I know). I have some friends who regularly do a defriending sweep to clear out people they friended up casually for various reasons but haven't spoken with in a long time, are no longer doing the shared activity that brought them together and have nothing else in common, or where they've just lost interest in the other person's writings and no longer want it on their friend page (such as on Livejournal). There are also cases where it would be ..tensemaking.. if you friend up with part of a particular clique but not the whole clique, so it's easier to just add everyone - and then when the clique wanders off and/or breaks up or whatever, you clear them all out again.

Then again, there's the unfriending that happens when a relationship breaks up; have one friend who tried to keep up a friendship with an ex's mother, but the mother wrote back that the ex didn't want them speaking anymore, for example. Or housemates moving out. Sometimes it's purposely spiteful, but other times not.

Janiece said...

MWT, you make some good points. But the individual who inspired this particular post was a casual meat friend - who used Facebook's unfriending mechanism to tell me he didn't want to be my friend anymore.

The douchebag warning signs had been there for a long time, but I chose not to "see" them. The end result was not surprising, just disappointing.

mozoella said...

Sometimes, 'unfriending' friends on social networks can be caused by people trying to get on your nerves. Sometimes people you don't may add you as friends, you accept them and become not just online friends but you even get to meet with them. 'Unfriending' people without telling them is quite cowardice, its not normal and so its bad....
VPS Hosting

Janiece said...

Welcome, mozoella.

You're welcome here, provided you're not spamming with your "VPS Hosting" link. Since it appears that English is not your native language, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.

Why did you include the link?