Unfriended
After clicking send on the tenth email of Monday morning I had a swig of coffee, opened a new tab in the browser, and jumped down the Tumblr rat hole for a few minutes. While hitting the “next post” keyboard shortcuta wonderful inventionI realised I had not seen any posts by distant friend in some time.
After wondering if I had missed her after re-joining Tumblr last month, I headed to Facebook, where we had also been friends for some time.
The little button on her profile page said “Add Friend”meaning she had “unfriended” me.
Of course I immediately began wondering what I had donewhat I had unwittingly said in a blog post, or not responded to, or not liked, or not commented on. Being “unfriended” by somebody you know wellno matter what the reasonis hard.
I've unfriended people in the past, but never individuallyusually as a result of playing with the various options in Google+, Facebook, or Twitter, and removing everybody from a certain group (friends from the internet, school friends, etc) in order to cut down the noise. Of course these days the social networksfilter everything we see anyway, so manipulating the news feed through the people you follow has become largelypointless.
I find myself caught this morningdo I reach out, or do I sit here and wonder why? Sometimes I guess we just need to move onbutsaying it, and doing it are two entirely different things.
Living on the other side of the planet from almost everybody you know via the social internet is hard sometimesyou look on enviously while your circle of distant friends congregate for meetups and parties, and you realise that the chances of ever meeting for coffee with any of them in the real world is infinitesimal.