My first experience unfriending a friend on Facebook

I'm a nice guy. Over the years, though I may unfollow some people on facebook, frankly, I've never unfriended anyone.

Yeah, I'm just that nice a guy.

Until recently, that is.

And interestingly, it was quite a liberating feeling.

I met this "friend" at a business bootcamp years ago, and we added each other on Facebook, which was pretty much a norm anyway. We never really communicated much, but of course, I saw him pop up on my timeline from time to time. Being quite active on Facebook, plus the fact that we have a lot of mutual friends too, so sometimes it's by the shares and comments of our network that hi status updates got on my feed.

At this point, I have to confess that to me, there are mainly three kind of friends on facebook.

1. Those who share valueable info

These are the friends I like to keep. They share value added info that everyone can learn from. Some of the better ones even added their personal insights and experience when attaching a link. I find that's a really good personal touch (rather than just copwying the title of the article they are posting again. Duh, FB will already show the title of the article lar...).

Still, they are good ones, because they share good stuff, and I grew to respect their views and comments, because most of the time, the intention was never to show how much they know, but rather to spread the content itself.

2. Those who share their life

These ones, well, they tend to use Facebook as a personal jounal. What they eat, where they eat, how they eat, how they sleep, what time they wake up, what they bought, what they didn't buy, what they queuing up to buy, their cats, dogs, kids, family, period timings, rants.

Yeah, like I said, a public diary.

Onnly, most of the time, even if they share something of value, say an article, they will always add a piece of them in it. Sometimes I do get the me-me-me feeling from their post, so these friends, I usually unfollow after a while.

3. Those who share their life too much

These are generally those who are type #2 who go over board. Like 10x over board.

If the previous one is me-me-me, this one is me-me-me-me-me-me-me-that's-me-too. Call it jealousy, but when you see their gangs stroking their ego, man, I swear Facebook servers would pause and recaliberate for 3.6 seconds. Well, birds of the feather flocks together.

Personally, as someone in the marketing space, I'm more offended when the Type 3 who happened to be marketing "experts", and the guru in them starts dishing out advice too. Of course when you know said expert is not really an expert, I think that got into me.

Side topic: An expert, by my definition, is one who constantly grows within his/her areas of expertise, and is fully aware of the neighbouring topics. He/she is also able to condense his learnings into actionable frameworks so others can at least replicate 75% of his/her success. Ideally, he/she is also generous with their sharings, because that will propel them to empty out their vault of knowledge and go out to learn more.

Back to this story/rant.

So the friend that I unfriended, was someone like that. Type 3 + "guru". Someone who happened to be in the same industry, and recently because of the launch of a new product, kinda got into hyper me-me-me-look-at-me-wow-its-me-in-the-media-yeap-that's-me mode. One night, I just decided to unfriend him, after unfollowing him.

I still see his feeds from time to time, because close friends would screenshot his latest antics and showed it to me. More like a practical joke. Occasioanally, since his timeline is so public, I do take a peek to remind myself what not to do on Facebook.

It was then that I realise how narcissistic someone can be on social media. Up to a point where the number of likes and comments become the highlight of the day, and teaching others how to do it become the hallmark of the bank account. Having had friends who been through his workshops, and oddly, myself too, I can attest that while there are "shy" and "reclusive" individuals like me who prefer to keep personal stuff away from Facebook, there are some who really kicks Narcisistic Marketing/Social Whoring/Peacocking up 3 notches, following his advices from the training.

I would then take a breather, pause, and go into thoughts.

"Why am I behaving like this? Why is what this person is doing (which he can since there's no right or wrong) is affecting me so much?"

And then I'm reminded, the reason why I'm so affected by his antics (and those similar to him), could be a reminder that I myself had been guilty of it before. And it keeps me from commiting the same mistakes, and forces me to think a few times before putting up a post.

Like my mom always said,

"If you have nothing better to say, just shut up."

Also, in a totally unrelated scenario, she would also say,

"Success is like underwear. Every should have it, but not everyone should show it."

Funny how both of those advices, thought great as stand-clones, can be used as a double combo this scenario.

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