Poor Jimmy Kimmel. He got on national television to encourage us all to join him in the second annual National UnFriend Day on Facebook with the very best of intentions. But he didn't realize just how addicted we have become to the status updates of strangers. Jimmy, I hate to break it to you, but we're all just too nosy to say farewell to faux friends.
Personally, I come by this meddlesome MO honestly. I came up through the ranks of my hometown newspaper. I did nosy for a living. But I'm happy to say that Facebook has granted me the serenity to accept that I am not the master at snooping. Jimungo "friend" lists are proof positive there are tons of folks just like me.
We are the people who squeal when the little red number shows up in the upper lefthand corner of the page, alerting us to an incoming friend request. Finally! Someone wants to open up their world to us! Time to pull out the popcorn and settle in for some entertainment.
Remember that woman your uncle divorced 10 years ago? She's practically begging you to poke around her pictures and count the number of teeth she's lost since she took off with that creepy dude who was always hanging around their house bumming beers. And what about that guy you hooked up with that one time in college? Now is the time to find out if he ever managed to find a girl who doesn't mind his tendency to forget boobs are actually attached to one's chest!
Don't you see why we can't participate in UnFriend Day, no matter how well Kimmel's sells it? We may not be besties with these people, but we have an all access pass to crazy town, and we're soooo enjoying the ride. To hit "unfriend" would deny us the very sustenance upon which we build our own snarky status updates. Take mine just this morning:
Sometimes I feel like I'm reading people's letters to their sixth grade diary instead of their Facebook statuses.
Go ahead and judge me and my fellow snoops if you must. But I, for one, blame Facebook entirely for the loooooong list of strangers taking up my residence on my friends list. If we could just take a gander at the wall of anyone who requests us as a friend ... without actually having to friend them back, we'd be able to nose around without the over-inflated friend list.
Until Facebook makes that fix, I have send Jimmy my deepest apologies. I'm an addict, and faux friends are my drug of choice.
Admit it, how many friends on your list are just there so you can poke around in their lives?
Image via Facebook