Disecting Relationsips: Real and Virtual

There's this website called Faceboook, and unless you've been living under a rock for the last 2 years, you've heard of it. You might even have your own profile up and running on the web. Chances are pretty good that if you have your own Facebook profile, you have a list of Friends with whom you like to stay connected.

Friending on Facebook does not necessarily mean you have a deep, meaningful relationship. It could just mean the friend is someone you knew once and just want an easy way to see how they're doing. It could also mean that you actually do know the person friended in your real life and the virtual connection you make is merely to enhance this already existing relationship.

Isn't it fascinating how our culture can take a noun and turn it into a verb? Think Google, and it might make more sense. But I digress.

Sometimes we, Facebook users, friend people for the same reason people have the uncontrollable urge to rubberneck. I call it the Train Wreck Theory: morbid curiosity has taken over our lives and we just have to know what is going on in this person's life.

I've recently come across loads of people I used to work with at Hersheypark. I friended them because peeking in on their lives now and again and sharing mine with theirs reminds me of carefree summers spent laughing, joking, and playing games. It's fun to step back in time a little bit and be reminded of some of the happiest days of my life. We're even thinking about planning some kind of reunion when we'll half-jokingly take over the park for the day with our families. So many people I'd love to see from those summers of fun and frolic.

And as easy as it is to friend someone, it's even easier to unfriend someone. To friend someone, you must have the friendee's approval. But to unfriend, you just click an X and select confirm at the appropriate opportunity. The unfriendee has no idea they're being unfriended until they try to send you some electronic love only to find someone missing.

I've been so caught up in the Train Wreck Theory that I've friended oodles of people: kids from my elementary school days in South Jersey, girls I had a pseudo relationship with in college thanks to the sorority I was briefly a member of, and some of the folks that went to my high school and had a very limited reason for knowing who I am. These folks all have one thing in common: I always wondered where life took them and if they remembered me. They each accepted the friend requests, and we maybe wrote quick notes here and there on each other's walls or commented on how cute we thought each other's kids are. But in the end, I ultimately unfriended them because, really, in the grand scheme of my life, the relationship didn't exist or matter. I suspect most of them have no idea we don't appear on each other's friend lists anymore anyway.

It's easy to invite into and remove from one's digital world.

I'm been friended by many and unfriended too... although, with the exception of 3 people, I don't know who has unfriended me. Being unfriended by the 3 people I actually know and naively thought I had an actual non-digital friendship with was a shock.

Ok, only 2 were a shock. The disappointing part of being unfriended by 1 of them was mostly irritation that I didn't unfriend first. She beat me to the punch. But, at least the feeling was mutual: we didn't want each other to be a part of our real or digital lives any longer. It doesn't really matter who pulled the plug. I'm glad it's over and the connection is severed.

But the other 2 - wow! I didn't see that coming. Oddly enough all 3 know each other in real life. They're pretty much all attached at the hip. If one says, "Jump!" the others say, "How high?" It's be funny if it weren't so sad.

Due to a variety of circumstances, the 2 unfrienders and I are not a part of each other's circles anymore. I mistakenly believed that our digital relationship had more meaning than the Train Wreck Theory allows.

But really, if I consider the risks involved of maintaining any kind of relationship with my unfrienders, I owe them thanks for unfriending me and pushing me out of their circle of insanity.

I'm better off not being a part of it and can finally move on without wondering if I'm still considered one of them.

I'm not.

I don't want to be.

And I'm so glad I'm out.