What's in a "friend?"
To friend or to "unfriend?"
“I can’t believe Sarah unfriended me!”
“Did you notice that Mikey unfriended Joe?”
“I can’t believe Amy forgot to blog yesterday. I’m so unfriending her!”
Luckily, these aren’t really phrases I’ve heard around VML’s GateOne, but according to the New Oxford American Dictionary, this year the word “unfriend” became a legitimate part of the English language (See the Oxford University Press blog), and I’m sure we’ve all heard it at some point. Yes, my friends, Facebook (and other social networking sites) has officially taken over our lives. (“My friends?” – Who am I? John McCain?)
I’m sure that this is probably common knowledge at this point since the Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year was announced last month. But in discussing “unfriend” with a friend – who I would never unfriend – this morning, I started to think about the real-life social impact that Facebook has had outside of the time we spend on the site. What does it mean for someone to unfriend me? Can I be friends with that person outside of Facebook if they so rudely deleted me from their friend list? Are my status updates that annoying? Or even worse, what have I done to deserve such punishment? (See 8 Reasons to Unfriend Someone on Facebook.)
I took it upon myself to have an informal survey of nine people this afternoon about how they would feel and what they would do if a close friend unfriended them from Facebook. Before answering, most people asked me “Why? Who deleted you?” under the assumption that I was asking for advice. After assuring them that I was not, in fact, a victim of Facebook deletion, all nine people had similar responses. First, they’d be offended. And then they’d call the friend and ask why. Facebook is a virtual world that mirrors our real lives. The people I have at some point called “friends,” my personal interests, and brands I interact with are all displayed in a nice organized way for the world to see. At the same time, deleting any of these things from my Facebook profile is a reflection of deleting them from my life. It’s a simple, one-click process. It’s one that, apparently, sometimes hurts (and that Burger King once tried to get us all to do). It’s one that has become so important in society that it has made it to the black-and-white pages of the dictionary. “Friend” is now just as much a verb as it is a noun. I bet Mark Zuckerberg didn’t expect that when he founded Facebook.
Now this is normally the part of the blog where I would tie this back to how social media has had a tremendously large affect on everyone’s lives over the past few years (duh) and its importance in marketing. I think those things have already been and will be covered over and over in the previous and future GateOne posts. Instead, I’m going to go find out which of my 685 Facebook friends de-friended me this morning.
(And if you were wondering, I used the words “friend” or “unfriend” 19 times in this blog post.)
Image source: jeffkolar
