So much has been written about facebook. I don't know too many people under the age of 60 who doesn't have an account. I am not going to talk about the pros and cons of facebook. That has been beaten to death. Maybe someone has written about this already, but there is one aspect which I find very unsettling. They are the ghost friends. I am aware that maybe it is because this is a problem just for me.
Who are ghost friends?
They are people who are on your friends list who are fairly active on facebook, but in all the years that you have friended them has never once "liked," commented or messaged you.
I have some ghost friends. Some of them are family by marriage who I have never met in person. Some are friends. I find that very voyeuristic and makes me feel uncomfortable. That someone is reading about my life by reading my statuses every other day and never cares to connect in any way? In the time since I opened my account, I had a baby, he had a birthday, tons of cute pictures, celebrated 2 anniversaries, 2 birthdays and not one comment?
You could ask me why I cannot just delete them. The thing is I hate doing that. Which brings me to something that my husband thinks is very mean. I have about close to 30 unaccepted friends requests in my account. I am too nice to click the ignore button, but I have not clicked the accept button either. One reason is that most of them use facebook to play stupid games. I do not want to get umpteem statuses about the cows, goats and rattlesnakes which I could care less about. Once I have a lot of people on the list I will have an unmanagable news feed (as I mostly check facebook every other day on a computer) and I will miss updates from people who I actually care about.
So now that you all know that I am a mean person, I hope you still come back to read. I do have to add that I have another account (not facebook) and all these people who have requested to add them are my "friends" there and haven't interacted in years. That is the main reason why I hesitate to add them here.
Actually, I have found a workaround to all the requests which I am implementing now. I had another facebook account which I have pretty much never used. I will add all friends there and am waiting to see if anyone interacts. If they do, I will tell them about the real account. You may think I am nuts to overthink it so much. But, this is how I manage my facebook time online. I do not need more things to overwhelm me.
How do you manage facebook?
8 comments:
I used to be the same about ignoring/deleting people but then my husband's career path changed and security now demands it. I deleted a fair portion of my list that were "ghost friends" and took my security settings to such that I can only be added if me and the other person share a mutual friend or if I add them of course. I still feel badly and a little awkward about this but figure it will get better with time.
In the future I may have a second account with a fake name to keep track of all the places I 'like'. Having the list on my profile right now gives people too much info about me and my interests and could potentially be used in the future if somebody was trying to collect info for unsavory purposes.
I accept most friend requests, even ones I'd rather not, like remote acquaintances of my husband whom I'll probably never even meet.
However, I hide almost everyone from my news feed; I only read updates from about a dozen people on a daily basis. When I (occasionally) have time to spare, I go manually check other people's individual walls, but not often. This is how I keep facebook manageable.
You are on the favored dozen list, does that make you feel special? ;)
I like that you can hide people from your news feed. I also want to utilize lists more... I just haven't taken the time to go through and categorize everyone. Ghost friends don't really bother me, but I do appreciate it when people take the time to comment! And I try to do the same to others, though I'm probably a ghost friend to a few people. :-)
I have this problem with work, consultants want to add me so I have two accounts. My personal account and my professional account.
I too feel bad deleting people so I have lists set up with different privacy settings and then I hide people in my news feed. Its worked so far.
Amy: I understand, but facebook is so sneaky that you would think you have the best settings, but suddenly it pulls out the rug from under you.
Lizzy: Yes, it does :)
Ashley: I have never tried the lists. My husband also doesn't care about ghost friends
Kyla: That is how my two accounts were too. When I was working, I had a separate professional account which was supposed to be just for work folks. Then soon after, I left the job and so the account was pretty much inactive.
I accept some of them even though I would not like to.I try to ignore so called ghost friends.Perfectly named.
I am totally late to this because FB means I don't visit blogs as often. *sigh* Sorry. But this interested me because you might want to know that those "ghost friends" may not actually see your status updates.
I read an article a while back that explained that FB decides whose statuses you see or don't see. So basically, if you leave a comment or like something someone has said or visit their page, then their status will show up in your feed. But if you never talk to folks or visit their page, then they are more likely to be deemed unimportant by the all-powerful FB, so you then don't see their statuses.
I'm dumbing down the article tremendously in my explanation because I don't remember the specifics all that well, but I do recall that you won't see all of your friends. Well, unless you only have a handful of friends. It works both ways. If they never comment on your posts, then it could be that they never actually see your posts. Kind of weird, but I believe the intent is to keep people updated with those FB determines are most important. Otherwise, those with large friend lists would be overwhelmed by updated statuses and would likely miss those that are most important.
I am even meaner than you - as soon as somebody I don't know or some in-law relative from my sister's marriage attempts to friend me, I hit the "please report them as SPAM person" button!! :)
My sister's mother-in-law is a nosy, conniving woman whom I will never trust (and pretty much despise!). She keeps trying to friend me and I keep deleting her right off that list. I think this 6th attempt may be the one she FINALLY figured out that I do not want her viewing my page.
I don't have many friends on my page. Most are college buddies, cop friends, and immediate family. Only a few are the friends I have met thru blogger and have continued to remain friends with in the real world, too. :)
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