What does (Facebook) friendship mean to you?

I overheard a conversation at work the other day so I stopped to participate.

It was so interesting.

The one guy said to the other that he wouldn't accept his friendship request on Facebook (no offense and all that!) because they're not really friends, they just work on one or two projects together.

This other guy thought it was hilarious and crazy.... (imagine if they were girls!)

Guy 1 then said that he considers friends people who come to his house, they know his daughter and wife, and he trusts them to be there for him practically and otherwise if he might need them.

Guy 2 was like "everybody is my friend"




It was so interesting.

At the time, I said that I think of it as circles of friends: 3 am friends, work friends, Facebook friends, school friends, restaurant friends, mothers' group friends and so on.

And obviously 3 am friends are different to Facebook friends because while you click LIKE on posts with Facebook friends, you share your heart with 3 am friends. It's more superficial with people who you don't let into your inner circle.

Guy 1 agreed but said he's sticking with his method. I then agreed with him and said that it is certainly easier and more straightforward his way, because I have mixed up the circles of friends and been hurt as a result, which totally proves his point.



Also, guys are so black and white with this stuff, isn't it?

Actually I shouldn't generalise because from previous conversations, some of you are too :)

Tell me about your friendship circles.

Will you accept all Facebook friend requests?

I used to accept much more FB requests but now I make sure I actually know the person well enough to talk to, or they engage with me a bit in comments, messages, etc.

{Friendship Friday} Do you ever feel rejected on Facebook?

 

I have a number of friends who are not on Facebook.

One of these friends is a really good friend and I've asked her before why on earth not? Was it a conscious decision (these are my best - I love to hear the thinking behind it)? Did something annoy her? Did something happen? What???

She told me she's tried THREE times to be on Facebook.

What on earth does that mean? How do you try to be on Facebook? Surely you either are or you aren't.

Apparently this is what happened.

She signed up, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and then started seeing other friends talking about things they were doing together.

Her friends would visit Jhb and see other friends but not her.

And she got hurt and jealous.

So she closed her account.

She then thought she was over all the nonsense, signed up again and the same feelings surfaced so she closed the account again.

And yes, you guessed it, it happened again.

That's how you try three times to do Facebook.

She said to me that she realised she doesn't like feeling left out and so while the meetings are obviously still happening now, at least she doesn't know about them and they don't hurt her so much.

When her friends all get together without her, she feels like they're rejecting her.

little friends

My own facebook story is a little different. I joined way back when I had very few friends (real life friends) and it was mainly to let people get to know me a bit more for my business.

This was good because I think I have good Facebook habits :)

I even teach how to not let FB be a time suck in my business products. Anyway.

I go on for a purpose and spend my required time (15 minutes or so) reading some of the statuses, commenting, replying to messages, "liking", etc.

Quick and efficient, that's my motto.

BUT occasionally, like on a Friday night when I have a bit more leeway, I sometimes wander around a bit and that's when I also experience what my friend does.

You see everyone commenting left, right and centre (do you say that?), all loving one another through their words and I'll admit - I do often feel rejected. But thankfully, this maybe only happens for a few minutes about twice a month because I click out so I don't have to get mired in all of those negative feelings.

By the way, I'm not as disciplined with blogs and so I feel much more rejected when I read other people's blog comments.

AHA moment - stop reading other people's comments!

Over to you.

Do you ever feel rejected on Facebook? Or on the blogs?

PS click on the Friendship Friday label below this post to read the other posts in this series.

{Friendship Friday} Are Facebook friends real friends?

So there was a bright spot in yesterday's horrible experience.

I ran into an ex-boss (not my wonderful boss), a real ex-boss (previous company) during the lunch break.

He now works for one of our partner companies who have offices on our campus.

As I was rushing past, he says, "oh wait, we can ask MARCIA. She'll know all about this stuff"

So I go over and meet the girl he was coffee-ing with.

And they ask me about Pinterest.

Which is cool. Because I have opinions. Lots of them.

But that's not the subject of this post.

I start explaining to the girl about getting onto Pinterest and what it's for, and then I say to him, "waitaminute. How do you know I'm on Pinterest?"

I have definitely not spoken to him about crafty stuff (which is when P usually comes up). We mainly talk about living with passion/ purpose and those sorts of things :)

He says, "I check all your status updates on Facebook".

Aaahhh.

It made me feel ever so slightly creeped out the way I always feel when I don't know people are reading my stuff because they never talk back.

Kind of like when people I know read the blog and never say "hi". (by never I mean less than once a month :))

Kind of like if people had to come into your house, mess up your cushions in your lounge, drink your tea and eat your biscuits and don't even talk to you.

*ahem*

Moving on.

These two are real friends and Facebook friends

That wasn't the thing I want to blog about.

So this girl says, "speaking about Facebook, I ran into someone the other day who I'm FB friends with and they didn't even LOOK at me or say hello"

To which I said, "I know! I got out the lift the other day and saw someone I'm FB friends with and yet we don't speak at work"

Crazy.

The ex-boss said, "you better unfriend him" and I said, "I'm thinking about it".

I won't, of course, because I have a clear little compartment in my mind for my Facebook friends.

It's like Facebook exists in an alternative universe for me, so it's not real life.

How can it be real life when everybody pretends their lives are ever so happy and perfect OR they hint at problems ("oh dear, I didn't see that coming") in vague status updates?

I tend to think if you're hinting at problems on FB in a vague manner and you don't want to deal with things appropriately or you're just looking for drama, then you have bigger problems anyway.

I also refer to Facebook friends as Facebook friends, which I guess for me just means acquaintances.

Because when I talk about proper friends who I chat to on FB, I just say "friends" or "blog friends" (and if they look at me weird then I just say "friends" from then on).

The whole conversation reminded me how we're friends with the whole world on FB and yet we're proper friends with less than 10%.

I have about 20 - 30 people I am proper friends with and they're on Facebook. With this bunch, we talk properly through the message even though I don't see them at all due to distance, etc.


Are your Facebook friends real friends? Do you talk outside of Facebook? Are you even on Facebook? Are we Facebook friends? Do you post vague updates? :)

Love this about Facebook

You know when people comment on your statuses or write on your wall, Facebook sends you an email.

Well, I love that you can now (I say now, but it's probably a month old if not longer) reply to that email and your answer goes right back on your wall or as a comment without logging in.

I seriously love that!

Now wouldn't it be great if Blogger did the same thing?

I'd be able to respond to comments so much quicker and my email box would be emptied in a jiffy!

P.S. speaking about blogging stuff...

1. Some of you have something weird going on with the comment function on your blogger blogs. That means I can't comment at all (it doesn't show me a "post a comment" link). It will get fixed if you go into your settings and select the FIRST option and I'll then be able to comment :)

2. I will say this - I am nothing if not determined (sometimes) so I'll send the link to another computer and try to post a comment from different places. Sometimes that does work; it just takes forever.

3. Shelby, something even weirder is going on with your comments as I can't ever comment on your blog (have tried from all my computers!) nor can I find an email address to mail you on. (Shelby also has twins and the one boy's name is also Connor).

While I'm thinking blog stuff, is anything weird going on with my blog?

Questions about photos on Facebook

So two things:

I take tons of photos every week because I'm a bad photographer and I know if I take, let's say 5 - 10, there's bound to be at least one good one in the batch. The problem is the babies move so quickly and while I intended one thing, they've done 3 - 4 cute things while I'm snapping away.

Which results in tons of photos on my hard drive that need to be organised.

Especially since I take pics with two cameras. One is very good for day shots and I haven't figured out how to take good night pics so I still use my old Kodak for the night shots.

I'm organising mine this way at the moment.

• I download at least once every two weeks.
• I then make folders titled "19 weeks 17 -23 Nov", etc.
• I drag the photos into the relevant folders first so I don't feel overwhelmed by all that work.
• Then I go into each folder and delete those I don't want.
• While I'm doing that, I compress the ones I want to blog. I do a Save As and put them in a separate "to blog" folder. Then I delete from that folder as I blog them because the original is saved in the weekly folders.

So how do you organise your pics on your computer?


Also, here's a touchy subject.

If you're a friend of mine, you'll see I have some of D & me on holiday in years past, and just this week I put my preggy pics on there. I made the latest album private so only friends could view but you know FB, every Tom Dick and Harry is your friend. Or is that just me?

I am getting pickier but in the beginning I just accepted friend requests from anyone. Now if people are annoying or I can see I don't gel with them, I unfriend, but the fact is there are hundreds of people who aren't really friends of mine.

So I'm thinking about the babies... on the one hand I do want to make albums and put some of their pics there. But on the other hand, what about the privacy issue? Funny, I feel no such qualms about the blog! Ha!

What do you think I should do? Do you have lots of pics of your kids on Facebook?