This may surprise some of you, but I joined Second Life in 2007, and it was only this year I decided to “cull” my friend list. Oh sure, I’ve deleted people here and there, but if a stranger I met ten years ago friended me then never spoke to me again, chances are they were probably still on my friend list. Why?
1. Crazy as it sounds, I thought one day I might run into the person again. Not the most logical reason since I’m bad at initiating contact (I’m working to improve on this), and if I ever message you first, you’re in the minority.
2. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I realize if a person never speaks to you, they probably won’t even notice you’ve deleted them … but still, just in case!
With this mindset, you can imagine how big my friend list became.
Well, I put an end to this recently and did a “mass culling.” I deleted just a few people at first; but threw up my hands and went in for the massive clear out in the end.
I’ll be honest. A couple were personal. The rest, however, were because I believe I’ll never interact with the people again: Why should I watch strangers log on and off?
Reasons I KEPT people:
- Person is an actual friend
- They visit me and/or I see them around
- Been good to me in some way
- Gut feeling I should keep them
It might sound funny, but I believe it’s psychologically freeing to remove names that no longer have meaning. It took me 14 years to do it, but I’m glad I did.
EDIT: If I deleted anyone who would actually like to remain on my friend list (It’s possible I made a mistake), just tell me, and I’ll happily add you back.
Here’s an interesting factoid I picked up recently…
An influential and oft-repeated theory called Dunbar’s number, which suggested that the average person can only maintain about 150 stable social relationships at a time, has been downgraded to as low as just 42 people. “This is a day that will live in infamy,” said Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
So, there is a sound psychological rationale for culling your friends’ list to a manageable and meaningful number, otherwise most of those ‘relationships’ become meaningless and unnecessary. I love that the stable number is now 42 as well – it must be true!
Feel free to share this snippet with FB ‘friends’ too! 😉
s. x
Interesting, Seren. Thanks for sharing!