
The “Friend” You Only Spent 5 Minutes With - salehhamadeh
https://medium.com/millennials-guide/the-friend-you-only-spent-5-minutes-with-948ce73eae25
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carlmr
I have an iterative unfriending algorithm, because doing big clean ups is a
mental task. Whenever Facebook notifies me that somebody has a birthday, if I
don't feel like telling them happy birthday, I'll unfriend them instead.

~~~
saltysnoot
So the key to remaining your Facebook friend is to not publish your birthday
on Facebook!

~~~
carlmr
That's true. Also no annoying vacation diaries. If they don't get filtered I
might unfriend you for those, too.

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aib
The problem is not spending your time getting updates from Albert J. Random.
The problem is getting bombarded by videos and other social-media-tailored
content Albert (or any of the other people you've spent 5 minutes with in your
life) didn't create but just happened to like or share.

The only thing that interests me on Facebook is what my "friends" have
originated. My interest and time spent have declined in direct correlation
with the amount of said content.

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c22
I always thought it was weird when someone sent me a friend request after
meeting me one time. I made it my policy to ignore these requests and just let
them sit. Then if I ended up meeting the person 2 or 3 more times and it
seemed like we were connecting I'd hit "accept". Sometimes this would happen
months later and the person would be surprised. They'd have forgotten they
even sent the request.

Eventually I realized I wasn't getting a lot of value from facebook and left
entirely.

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galfarragem
That was exactly my first step to drastically reduce facebook usage:

1 - Unfollow all your "friends".

2 - Unfollow friends that post too much. Only get in touch with them by email
or presencial.

3 - Facebook becomes so static that you hardly ever have the urge to visit it.

~~~
beatgammit
My solution was to stop using Facebook cold turkey and request that my friends
contact me another way. My real friends did, the rest didn't bother. I spend
more time interacting with people I care about and less time "interacting"
with "friends".

~~~
realshowbiz
Came here to say this.

Deleting my fb account has been a positive experience. Real friends stay in
touch, and the stressful negative/argumentative comment threads and posts are
gone.

Admittedly I still use instagram. Their model works well to let me keep in
touch loosely, without highlighting every like/repost/comment of the people
who I follow.

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tjpaudio
I'll counter: There have been quite a few instances of FB friends like this in
my life. I rarely deny a friend request or go on deleting sprees. If I meet
someone doing interesting things, I'll be the requestor even. What happens
occasionally is I find out someone I spoke with in person for only a few
minutes, reveals over weeks, months, or even years, has very similar
interests, humor style, etc. Comments on each other's post increase in
frequency, until the fake friend becomes a real one after reaching out via a
message that doesn't really come off as odd at all at this point. Who I do
find myself unfriending is those I dated briefly that inevitably get married
and have kids. Good for them, but time to disconnect. As I grow older, I
realize more friends are a function of convenience. Your "real friends" will
go on to do things in their life that distance them from you, and seem less
like real friends, and your "fake friends" will become real friends when it
seems logical. This ebb and flow may seem ugly to some, that would prefer to
view all their friends as genuine stakeholders in their life with unwavering
caring, and some of that does happen, but there is beauty in friendships being
temporal as well.

~~~
salehhamadeh
The friendship with Albert is a shallow one that the main character is not
interested in. The "friends" you are referring to are people you admire but do
not know well. I definitely have some of those friends, some who are a source
of inspiration for me. With these people, it's easier to enhance the
friendship over social media than in person. For example, people who are into
painting or photography upload their work online. Viewing, liking, and
discussing their art would teach me more about them than talking in person.

I like your idea of "real friends" VS temporal friends. One problem with only
having "real friends" is that people get hung up on them, and if circumstances
separate them they'd have a harder time acclimating with the change.

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joezydeco
This is worse on LinkedIn. Every recruiter wants to connect with you blindly
before they'll share details about some mysterious job they have in their
pocket, just waiting for you.

If you keep LI to _only_ people you've actually spent more than 4 weeks
working with, it becomes a lot more sane.

