John Smith has terminated friendship. I had just logged on a few days ago when that window popped up in the lower right corner of my screen. It was a poignant moment: this was my first relationship in SL. It was a casual relationship--he was a younger guy, though definitely age-verified, who wanted to learn from an 'experienced' older woman. Things had started to take a different turn when he suggested maybe he wanted to explore something more with me than just the cilched younger man-older woman thing. It was a prospect worth considering. Then something happened and I was away from SL for five months. When I came back things weren't really the same, and then we just lost touch and I found someone else who I am very happy with now. I am sure either he was doing some simple pruning of his friends list, eliminating those he hasn't had contact with in awhile, or he has found someone who is making him happy and no longer needs to have me on his list and therefore not a potential problem later. Regardless of the reasons I do hope he is happy and if he is somehow reading this blog, I will tell him no hard feelings and if I somehow run into him somewhere else in SL I'll just say hi.
I do an occasional pruning of my friends list. There are people on my list that I have spoken to maybe once, or simply have lost touch with them and haven't heard from in a long time. There are some I feel reluctant to remove in the hopes that circumstances will change and somehow we end up connecting again. These are people either I could have a professional relationship with in SL, or just fascinating people altogether. The ones I end up removing are simply done as a convenience gesture, a way to keep it from taking 5 minutes to load my list in Second Life. I think most people in SL practice this gesture and it's done without animosity or drama or any personal reason whatsoever.
The act of 'unfriending' someone is a whole other kettle of fish.
As I write this I have had exactly 2 hours of sleep. I was up until 4:30 this morning dealing with what I can best describe as 'high school drama'. It stems from what's looking like a very nasty breakup with two people, where last night I was bombarded from all sides with people trying to make me take one side or the other. I was receiving bits of chat logs where I was supposed to sympathize, and other peripheral 'friends' who were supposedly invited to a concert the couple was attending and replied, 'Well if so-and-so is going to be there, I won't be there.' and all that. After hours of this bombardment and an entire circle of people doing nothing but ruining my time, I forced a meeting with all of them together where I was going to say to everyone involved that I wasn't going to play the high school game of attending a concert or a party and wanting to TP my friends in and be told 'well if so-and-so is going to be there I won't be', or acting silly because both members of the couple in question are present. I wasn't going to take sides in the breakup, and quite frankly I felt like I was playing camp counselor at a lunatic asylum. What it devolved into was the couple at the heart of the matter pushing each others buttons and yelling and screaming. I was told I was inconveniencing people and creating drama.
I'm creating drama? I'm not the one acting like a bitchy 14-year-old. And I graduated from high school already.
Up until recently I have never threatened to 'unfriend' someone for their behavior. I don't like it when someone gets into a snit on a discussion board or a fansite or Twitter and makes a bold announcement of 'That's it, I'm leaving and never coming back!' just to get the attention. If you're going to say something like that, you better damn well mean it. You don't get to say it around me more than once, because if you're still there after you make that pronouncement and then you end up saying it again, I'm the first to tell that person to not let the door hit them on the way out. Same thing for people who threaten to leave SL entirely because they get into some disagreement with someone else. The Grid is big enough and has enough activities in it so you don't have to be around people you're on the outs with if you really don't want to be around them.
Same thing for the 'unfriend' button. The Grid is too big with too many activities in it. But if someone's behavior becomes truly dangerous, or they insist on making things so unpleasant for you that your enjoyment of SL is going to be ruined simply by logging on, I think it crosses the line. I have yet to decide if I'm going to 'unfriend' any of these people. But I also have yet to decide that I'm not, either.
Just a bit of fair warning to a bunch of bitchy 14-year-olds.
