Facebook “Friends”

Since the advent of Facebook, the boundaries that once defined the group of people called “friends” have blurred and/or broadened more considerably. Unless one is the type that dutifully scrutinizes every friend request against a set of stringent criteria, people generally will hit the accept button without too much deliberation.

Personally, I’ll add friend requests if I’ve had some sort of direct interaction with the person. I figure that since I am acquainted with them and Facebook is a social networking tool, I shouldn’t be picking bones with the fact that they don’t exactly fall into my ideal definition of what a “friend” is. Besides, at what point in the stranger/friend continuum does an acquaintance become a friend or a friend transition to being a mere acquaintance?

But suppose you have Facebook “friends” who were acquaintances at the time of the add, but your relationship with them never progressed and you haven’t seen or spoken to them at all in the last six years. Would you conduct a Facebook purge and de-friend them? Now the consideration here is this — what is the point of having a social network clogged with people who are, in effect, strangers to you? Doesn’t that dilute the effectiveness of the networking tool (I’m thinking of the News Feed in particular)? Now it’s one thing if these are ones that you still want to stay connected to for one reason or another (i.e. being able to see what your junior high classmates are doing in life), albeit passively (you stalker). It’s another thing if these are people you will never see or care to see or plan on seeing ever again (Yes, yes. I know the future may never go according to plan, but please follow my drift).

So, would you de-friend? Thumbs up or thumbs down?