Facebook un-friending etiquette??

November 11, 2015 1:25 PM

I have an acquaintance who I suppose used to be a (shitty) friend. he was an asshole to me when I was in college so I don't talk to him anymore. I don't think he knows that I hate him, and I don't care to reopen that can of worms with him since I don't want to see him again. He is still my Facebook friend, but I want to get rid of him BUT I might see him at weddings/etc. in the future. Would you unfriend him if you were me?

He said some pretty unforgivable things, but I didn't have the self-esteem at the time to cut him off completely when I was in college. For all I know he still thinks we are still "friends" even though we haven't talked for years. But now that I like myself more, I realize that I can't stand him and have no interest in seeing him again.

I no longer want him on my friend list, since thinking about him only brings up bad memories. I honestly kind of want him to know through the unfriending that I just dont like him as a person due to the way he treated me in the past. I actually hope he feels bad when he notices I've unfriended him (and he will notice). I know this is petty but i don't really care.

The problem is that we were in the same circle of friends, and I still hang out with some of those people. I don't think I'll be able to avoid him forever. For example i'm sure I will get invited to their weddings and he will probably be there. If I unfriend him, he might be an even bigger douche than before, and we might even be sitting at the same table.

but it all comes down to me not wanting people that I hate and have caused me pain in my friend list, otherwise what is the point of it being a 'friend' list? Am I making a mistake? thank you in advance for your advice.

posted by Thanquol180 to Human Relations (28 answers total)

Yes, unfriend. You'll feel better, and that's the most important thing here.
posted by prismatic7 at 1:28 PM on November 11, 2015 [9 favorites]

Stop thinking about it. Just unfriend him. Worst case, he notices and has a problem with it and you say "oh, I don't use Facebook very much anymore," or "oh, I ended up pairing down to just the people I see every week" or something .

There are half measures (unfollowing, blocking, and the like) that I'm sure will be suggested, but that's honestly putting too much thought into it. Just unfriend.
posted by sparklemotion at 1:29 PM on November 11, 2015 [22 favorites]

You are giving this too much thought -- this is someone you might possibly see in the future but do not see on a regular basis. Just do it! And then spend your mental energy on something else. (Which is another reason you should definitely unfriend him.)

If you ever happen to see him again, and he asks about it (which is not going to happen), you can say "oh really, I didn't notice! Hmm, I'm not sure what happened!" And then change the subject. But really this future you are imagining is way too low-probability to be worth thinking about.
posted by _Silky_ at 1:30 PM on November 11, 2015 [8 favorites]

I would unfriend him in a second. The funny thing about Facebook is peole have soooo many people on there from so many different times in their lives that he probably won't even notice you're gone. I think most people have all but a few of their friends on mute these days.
posted by bleep at 1:31 PM on November 11, 2015 [10 favorites]

Go ahead, but you can also just block him from your feed, too.
As for bringing up the past with him at parties- please don't unless forced to. Respect the event by not making it more unpleasant or all about you. Just avoid. That sends the same message but is better for everyone.
posted by TenaciousB at 1:31 PM on November 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

if you want him to know, then yeah, just unfriend and realize you might have to deal with some fallout. if you just want him gone from your feed and don't want to deal with any fallout, just mute/hide him. both have their merits.
posted by nadawi at 1:31 PM on November 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'd personally put him in 'quarantine', that is, mute him and put him on a restricted list (which works if you post to friends minus restricted) for a month. Then revisit. If you stay friends you may have a better idea what events he will be at.
posted by typecloud at 1:34 PM on November 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

Facebook won't notify him if you unfriend him. Go ahead and do it.
posted by shiny blue object at 1:39 PM on November 11, 2015

Facebook makes a point of telling you when someone "friends" you (the verbing of nouns continues apace) but does not produce a notification when someone "unfriends" you. This is not an accident.
posted by RedOrGreen at 1:39 PM on November 11, 2015 [11 favorites]

Yes, just unfriend him. If you ever see him at weddings, you can live through a few moments of awkwardness. Just be civil and ignore him. If he actually confronts you about the unfriending, just brush it off. "Oh, I don't know what happened..." or something. And if he presses you and starts acting like a douche, you can point out you unfriended him for this very reason...because he acts like a douche.
posted by Leontine at 1:42 PM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you want him to know, by all means unfriend. It sounds like this would be an entirely reasonable course of action given his behaviour.

But, if you want to minimize drama, just unfollow him and put him on your restricted list. You won't see his stuff in your newsfeed and he will just think you aren't on there very much.
posted by rpfields at 1:42 PM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

In a New York minute I would. He would only notice if he's been following your feed enough to suss that he isn't seeing your posts any more.

After that, if you see him at weddings, be just coldly polite enough not to create a stink, and other that that avoid like the plague.
posted by Gelatin at 1:43 PM on November 11, 2015

Also, in regard to this: I honestly kind of want him to know through the unfriending that I just dont like him as a person due to the way he treated me in the past. I actually hope he feels bad when he notices I've unfriended him (and he will notice).

In the first place, unless he's been liking and/or commenting on your posts, you don't know if he's seeing anything of yours in the first place. More importantly, desires like the ones you expressed give him not only way more power than he should have, but also a likely unattainable goal for you.

Just drop him, without fuss or bother. If he does bring it up, the advice to brush it off with a casual "oh, I didn't notice / give it much thought" is sound, and returns the power to you -- if he acts like a jerk at someone else's wedding, I'd predict he's in for a lot more unfriending to follow.
posted by Gelatin at 1:47 PM on November 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

Yes, unfriend him. Don't bother telling him ahead of time, just do it: he'll probably never even notice.

(And I've blocked, not unfriended, a brother-in-law; that's worked nicely too. I don't care if he sees anything I post, I just got damned tired of him putting up politically-extreme posts literally 30-40 times every day.)
posted by easily confused at 1:47 PM on November 11, 2015

just a note - blocking is what you do when you don't want someone to even see your fully public posts or search for you. unfollowing is what you do when you want to just remove them from your feed, but stay friends. unfriending is what you do when you don't want them to see what you post for friends.
posted by nadawi at 1:49 PM on November 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

Unfriend him. He won't find out unless he's looking, but you haven't talked in years. He's also an ass who hurt you, and seeing reminders of his existence everyday probably isn't fun for you. Life is short, get this guy out of your life as much as you're able to.

I unfriend people I haven't talked to in years. Sometimes I've accidentally noticed the same being done to me. Didn't bother me one bit.
posted by AppleTurnover at 1:58 PM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

"How come you unfriended me?"
"Information overload, I've whittled down my Facebook presence to a really small pool of people."

But mostly people don't ask. He may try friending you again one day thinking you fell off or whatever but just ignore it.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:59 PM on November 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

Unfriend. If he says something - which he won't - just say "oh that's weird" and then forget about it.

You're worrying about his potential feelings at the expense of your actual ones. Take care of yourself.
posted by sockermom at 1:59 PM on November 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's time for a new acronym: UTMFA.
posted by Flipping_Hades_Terwilliger at 2:02 PM on November 11, 2015 [12 favorites]

Blocking gives you the most control over the situation, which is why I'm such a fan of it. But there's no harm in unfriending.

Though, I will point out that I personally have at least one browser extension that will give you notifications when someone vanishes from your friends list; it took me a while to figure out how to turn that feature off, and I hadn't even realized it was there until several of my friends completely deleted their accounts in a single week. I probably have several extensions that will do this, but only one of them had it turned on by default.

FB also considers "who's your friend" to be public information, BTW, unless you go to your Friends tab and change the privacy setting (it took me seven clicks to find the exact right path to do this just now - they tend to move this sort of thing a lot.) So if your not-friend has stalker tendencies, you really do have to work to keep him from seeing who is and isn't your friend. And, as they put it:

Your friends control who can see their friendships on their own timelines. If people can see your friendship on another timeline, they'll be able to see it in news feed, search and other places on Facebook. They'll also be able to see mutual friends on your timeline.

posted by SMPA at 2:05 PM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've had internal debates like this. Unfriending and then blocking people who have been awful to you in the past feels amazing, I can't overstate it. It's helped me move toward recovering from times in my life where I had to deal with bad treatment and couldn't do anything about it.

As far as his response, you're simultaneously talking about not wanting to deal with fallout but wanting him to know, which to me sounds like you want it to be clear to him that the balance of power has shifted to your favor - you want him to know but not be able to do anything to you. You don't necessarily know what he's going to do, but it's unlikely that he's going to create huge drama in your larger social circle or that your friends are going to think you've done something beyond the pale. You also have no control over how he feels, only over what you do.

Unfriend him. Block him. Know you've moved on from that part of your life. Be happy.
posted by bile and syntax at 2:11 PM on November 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've unfriended people and then gotten shit about what a passive-aggressive dick move it was, from third parties, in person. So, while I fully recommend unfriending this person, be aware that it may well be noticed and some people seem to care about this stuff to a bizarre degree.
posted by 256 at 2:31 PM on November 11, 2015

I've slashed through my "friends" list over time with no issue. At first, like all social media sites, the urge was just to rack up as many "friends" as possible. I even used to "friend" people like my junior high bully, for the petty (satisfying!) thrill of comparing our relative successes and failures. A decade later, I have no reason to feel like I know anything about these people. Unfriend. Yay! Happy!

I've seen a couple unfriends at various events over the years, but... we're not friends. So who cares? No one's yet come up to me to ask, why did you unfriend me? And if they did? Well, that question seems like its own answer.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 4:24 PM on November 11, 2015

I'm gotten facebook privacy down to an art and just want to note a few things:

If someone has Facebook Purity or a similar add-on, they will get a notification when someone unfriends them (not that this should sway you - I'm just mentioning it for people who aren't aware).

It doesn't sound like this is the main issue for you but if him having any access at all to your facebook account (even if you block him from seeing your posts or whatever) is an issue (assuming you choose not to unfriend him), you can put him on your restricted list, which is effectively unfriending him in that he only will see the parts of your profile that non-friends (i.e. the public) would see, but you still show up in each others friends lists.

But otherwise I say if you want to unfriend him, knock yourself out and just make some excuse mentioned above if you see him. I went on an unfriending spree a few weeks ago because I had PMS and HATED THE WORLD, but I still haven't regretted it, even when a I felt better a few days later and realized that life had not been going to hell in a handbasket - I had just been hormonal ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
posted by triggerfinger at 4:56 PM on November 11, 2015

Sounds like someone you should feel ok about un-friending!

Don't just unfriend though- actually block him (click the little padlock in the top right corner, then type the person's name into the drop-down form). Otherwise you'll pop up on his list of "People he might wanna friend", which draws attention to the unfriending and may cause drama. If you block him it's less likely he'll even notice, and if he does notice he may just think you deleted FB.

Just FYI, he may be able to see your comments on friends' photos and walls though, and if so your name will be in grey text indicating that it's not a link he can click, which does make it pretty obvious that you intentionally blocked him.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 5:46 PM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

If I unfriend him, he might be an even bigger douche than before, and we might even be sitting at the same table.

You can handle it.

I honestly kind of want him to know through the unfriending that I just dont like him as a person due to the way he treated me in the past.

Let this go. Not because it's petty but because it means you're still trying to change his mind/win him over/get him to be nice to you. It won't work.*

I see three parts to this, and they're not about facebook. In order of difficulty:

1. Unfriending him is the easy part. It's a click and poof, he's gone.

2. Rare encounters at weddings of people from your past are anxiety-inducing but you can handle it.

3. Letting go of wanting him to recognize/regret being a dick is the hard part, because that's about you. You still want him to accept you. That low self-esteem you had in college is still part of you no matter how successful you are or how fabulous your life is. This isn't about that one guy not approving you - this is about you needing the approval of someone else. Get that sorted and the online stuff becomes a no-brainer.

*In other words, let me tell you about my family.
posted by headnsouth at 5:40 AM on November 12, 2015 [4 favorites]

I recommend blocking over unfriending. A blocked person can't see anything you post, at all. If you only unfriend, he could still see things you post to mutual friends which has way higher potential for awkwardness.
posted by masquesoporfavor at 1:23 PM on November 12, 2015

I couldn't agree more with what headnsouth said above. That you still care/wonder/think about someone with whom you haven't spoken in years means that there something about your self esteem that needs more work. Whatever you choose to do on Facebook won't really fix the issue.
posted by Kwadeng at 12:18 AM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]