Recently, I broke up with someone over e-mail. They didn't respond to the message and I was left wondering what to think. I told a friend about this, and she responded: "Check Facebook. Has he deleted you yet?".
He hadn't, but a week later, after we had exchanged a few more messages, I decided to focus on work and not open the most recent message he had sent, with its ominous subject line. But, I checked Facebook and lo and behold, I was one less friend. I knew we were done.
We've talked a lot in this space on how social media affects our life and relationships. Facebook is especially insidious. Its closed nature, high level of privacy filters, and association with things that happen in your "real life" (university and work networks) ensure that there is a level of authenticity to your interactions on the site.
Myspace, on the other hand, which is a bit more open, lends itself to "faker" experiences. In my experience, I see far more people filling out fake ages on Myspace than they do on Facebook, where people put their addresses, phone numbers, and real jobs.
While we would like to say "It's just Facebook", knowing that someone took the care to remove you from their list still hurts. And what information do most people post on there anyway? Great, now I won't know what asinine comment is running through your head right at that moment. But still -- thinking someone dislikes you that much to cut you off from accessing that does sting.
In a far more disturbing example of this, Emma Forrester was killed by her husband after changing her Facebook relationship status to "single".
Seeing it appear in public, both letting someone else know it's over while simultaneously opening yourself up to others is enough to drive someone crazy.
As our lives become even more digital, the line between "IRL" and online become in a sense, one and the same. What we do in the space does matter, does have repercussions offline and should be handled delicately.
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