The Great Facebook Purge

It started, oddly enough, with a birthday update a few days back.

Facebook was reminding me to wish so-and-so a "Happy Birthday!" Usually I deliberate briefly whether or not I feel like saying "Happy Birthday!", or "Happy Birthday X!", or, rarely, something even more customized.

Then it occurred to me. I have absolutely no knowledge of this person's life. Not just her recent life -- her life. I didn't know her well in school, and and I know her even less well now.

Why were we "friends", or, more specifically, "Facebook friends", that most tenuous of connections that can run the gamut between extreme hatred and adoration on one side, and complete indifference on the other?

It was then that I resolved to purge everyone with whom I can't remember having communication with in the last year.

As I went along, I made some exceptions. Some people I had kept out of misguided political thinking -- so-and-so was ambitious/proactive/well-connected. Then I realized that it has done a fat lot of good, and in a couple cases, had produced net pain in my life through oblivious inquiry when something was needed, and rapid departure back into the rarefied (to me) world of gainful employment in something socially estimable.

Some were obnoxious, and I cut them even if they had posted on my wall within the last six days.

Some were completely non-factors -- I hadn't noticed a single post by them in ages, either due to the sorting algorithm or their choice to spend their time differently. Not everyone uses Facebook the same way, nor should they.

Sometimes it was just me. I had done, or said, something weird, and thinking about communicating with that acquaintance just made me sick.

I also had no fucking clue who some people were. I blame the ability to change your name -- my memory is generally pretty good, even going back to high school. If I didn't remember you in high school, it's probably because you knew me by reputation, but I didn't know who you were. Sorry, but it's true.

And I unfriended my mom and stepdad. Really, they don't need to be my Facebook friends. If they want to get a status update, they'll yell from the next room. (Spoiler: I live at home! And I'm almost 30! He's a keeper!)

I also chuckled when I unfriended one member of a couple. Although it was invariably because I'm a non-factor in their lives, I get my jollies by thinking about whether it would ever come up in a conversation late at night, before they get to sleep. "So... Ryan was your friend?" Of course, silly. I never liked it when he started dating you, yet you glommed on like a barnacle. (Kidding in most cases. Dead serious in a few.)

I'll be honest -- I kept a couple people who are just physically attractive. Men as well as women. We like to be surrounded by beauty in this world, regardless of our sexual orientation or intensity, and I am no exception.

There were a few people I kept because of a handful of conversations in which I gained insight and sensitivity to them. One was a student who, when I explained feeling out of depth in a class sense at Cornell, told me his dad was a bus driver. I don't remember what his mom did. But it struck me, and something in that conversation still resonates, one-off as it might have been. Then there were HMC math professors who told me about their own humble backgrounds, or their fantastic volunteer work in education, for which they would get no academic advancement, but did anyway because they were damn decent human beings.

Similarly, a couple I kept because of the strength, or seeming strength, of friendship in the past. It was strong enough, and valuable enough, that I decided to keep them, though the relationship at present might be only so many stored variables on a hard drive somewhere. In some ways, it's like having photos of inspirational people on your wall--only these people were known to you, and mere time and distance, not the veil, have caused you to lose touch.

Also, there are a few people that are just too damn interesting to unfriend. They're as close as I get to celebrity watching. (None are "celebrities" or celebrity-types.)

I also noted that a reasonably large number (~30 or so) had up and left Facebook without me knowing. Their baby blue silhouettes were easy to discard, though I mourned some of them. Some of them would have been kept.

But in general, I found it surprisingly, disturbingly easy, and getting easier. And I admit -- I lied when I posted a while back congratulating the people that remained. I had pared away the surface, but refrained from making substantive cuts. That was probably a cut from 750 to 700.

This time is different. I cut to 324. That may still seem like too many friends, but keep in mind the "museum-piece friendships" described above.

Facebook does provide one thing: it provides an opportunity to reflect on the beginnings and endings of relationships in a way that memory alone, kind and cruel in its porousness, does not permit.

Without a regular job, or affiliation at a school, or clubs, I don't meet many new people. It has provided me with the necessity and opportunity to get to know some people better online than I had ever known them in school. I didn't expect this, and in some ways I didn't desire this, but so it is, and in some ways, I'm better for it.

It's easy to decry shallowness in relationships that aren't in-person; but a generation or two ago, people would have pen pals and letter correspondence for this reason. Think of it: what did it say about the strength of the distant relationship (or the fragility and facile nature of the local ones) that people would engage in long, wonderful letters, filled with more contemplation and thoughtfulness than, perhaps, a face-to-face conversation ever could? For some of us use penstrokes and typeset to communicate our hearts better than improvisation ever could.

At the same time, I can see that many relationships were ones of convenience. They are not to be diminished for them -- it's human nature that we bond with our roommates, or our classmates, or officemates, or people we see on a regular basis.

Doing a mental post-mortem on each relationship can be exhausting. But for a few, I paused, considered how I could've been a better friend, or how they could've contributed something more or different. In the vast majority of cases it was just a lack of sufficient compatibility on ideas, interests, and humor to make anything more of it.

But in a few cases, I feel there was something really to be mourned. A missed opportunity, or a quiet betrayal, or just bad luck. We can't be all things to all people, but there were a few I wish I had held more closely to me. (And while it might not be eternally "too late", it is, for the moment, prohibitive to repair the breach.)

Overall, I welcome this process. It helps me identify some common themes, whether it is humor, or thoughtfulness, or travel, that keeps me watching certain people, if not actively engaging with them regularly.

Finally, to anyone who might happen to be miffed at being cut and did a search for me that ended up here: please don't take it too personally. It's Facebook, for chrissakes. But if you want to have a comment fight over it, you can do so here. Who knows? It might be just what's needed to save a relationship, or build a new one from scratch.