as told by Barry Schwartz, formerly of (the former) Stylus, presently of Disco Vietnam, over Facebook chat, naturally
10:08am Barry: what do u do if u get a friend request from a chick you used to work with in high school that u had a crush on but she’s married
10:08am Me: ah this happened to me last week. the answer: accept the friend request and realize how unattractive she’s become and how much better than her you probably are now
10:09am Barry: no she’s super cute. but i deleted 20 friends last night
10:10amMe: depends on also the chances of ever seeing her in person
10:10am Barry: well we live in the same neighborhood but i hardly ever see her. probably because shes with her husband
10:11am Me: you can always become friends just to look at pictures of her
10:12am Barry: im going to accept but put her on a 2 month probationary period. if after 2 months our facebook friendship yields no interactions i will delete her.
I was leaving Friday’s with Kenny [Schwartz, the other Schwartz brother] the other night and i saw two girls I’m Facebook friends with saying goodbye to each other in the parking lot. I didn’t say hi to them because i didn’t want to and drove past them. i turned to Kenny and said, “I’m Facebook friends with both those girls and we didn’t say hi to each other in real life”
deleted them as soon as i got home
10:14am Barry and [Aforementioned Crush Girl] are now friends.
10:14am Me: that story is all the better by the fact that you and [that girl] becoming friends just showed up in the chat window
10:15am Barry: she’ll be deleted in two months I’m sure
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So the lesson here is: if you aren’t friends with someone in a Friday’s (or any good-time after-work appetizer chain restaurant, I’m sure) parking lot, than you don’t deserve to be friends online. In a world where virtual friendships threaten to supersede real ones, Barry has decided to fight back.
I haven’t done a purge yet, but there are plenty of ex girlfriends of people I haven’t talked to in years in my rolls who find the need to keep informing me which character on LOST they are or which minor league baseball team mascot they most likely would be based on a handful of survey questions. I can probably do without this information in my life, though it would be a good conversation starter in a parking lot that smells like potato skins.
Related: Cover story from this week’s New York Magazine on Facebook. “Do You Own Facebook? Or Does Facebook Own You?”
Inverted Soapbox 