Have you ever
noticed your Friends/Connections/Followers number decrease on one of your
favorite social networks and wonder who you offended this time? Oh, maybe that is
just the most likely scenario for me. It
could be an accidental unfriending, such as a few too many haphazard clicks
whilst cleaning out their friends list. Possibly
one of your drama-filled friends deactivated their account…again. On the contrary, perhaps you have so many
online friends you would not notice if 100 of them deleted you. That would never happen, though, because a
social media deity such as you would never deprive your friends of your every
mundane action, lest they grow confused and become unable to continue on with
their own lives.
Why do we choose
to virtually follow the lives of some but ignore others? Well, according to a recent study, it turns out online social
networking works a lot like offline socialization. Most people tend to stick with people they
know, but are also more likely to chat with friends of friends than perfect strangers. Also, most people do not like people who
offend them, are boring, or are simply annoying. So, as with real life, it would seem getting
somewhere online is all about who you know.
Also, being a bit of a downer causes others to quietly push you out of
their lives.
Philosoraptor might be on to something here…
What is really
interesting, though, is men and women have different requirements for their online
social circles, much like in everyday life.
Women are most likely to friend people online who they actually know
outside the internet. Men, on the other
hand, are more likely to accept a friend based off of other factors, such as
who said “friend” knows, what they look like, what business they are in, or
even for no reason at all. On the
flipside, women are more prone to unfriend people who post offensive comments
(commit social faux pas, if you will), or who they just do not know very well,
while men are more apt to delete someone who pesters them to buy something. The study also points out men are more prone
to use social media for business networking and dating, while women use it as a
creative outlet and to participate in the marketing efforts of businesses who
utilize social media, particularly to
provide positive feedback.
The "Like" Button = catnip for the ladies.
On the surface, the
numbers make it seem like men and women use social media in mutually exclusive
ways. However, the study points out most
of us—men and women alike—use online social networking primarily for the
reasons it was invented: staying in
contact with family and friends, reconnecting with old friends, and finding for
new friends. Even with technology
altering our day to day interactions, and completely overhauling how we
communicate with each other, our social constructs appear to translate
perfectly. While social politics vary
from culture to culture and generation to generation, our innate need to
provide order and context to our interactions with each other prevail
regardless of the forum. After all, man is by nature a
political animal, as Aristotle observed some 2400+ years ago. Some things never change.
Oh, and if you
really have ever wondered who, exactly, was the person who unfriended you, you
will be happy to hear there is a Facebook app for that! Well,
so long as you use Firefox, that is, as
it requires a companion extension to work. There probably is a version
out there for other browsers, and you can find out right here.
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