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Life&Style

 

Stuck in Purge-atory: the Facebook edition

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By Laurel Borrowman,
Life & Style Editor

I have way too much stuff. You
probably do too. Stuck in Purge-atory
is a weekly chronicle of the quest by
my roommate Emily and I to get rid

of extraneous excess in our lives by
giving away or throwing out one thing
everyday until the end of time.

hen we talk about people
we know, often times we
put them into categories

based on how well we know them,
how much we like them, how much
we hate them, how often we see
them, how close we live to them,
how many times we've held his or
her hair back while puking, or how
many texts we exchange with them
ona daily basis. It’s a sliding scale
of best friends to mortal enemies to
complete strangers.

In real life, | have one person
who holds the title of Soul
Roommate (glorified best friend,
really): Emily, my partner in
Purge-atory and all sorts of other
shenanigans. I have about 10
people I call really good and best
friends. I’d gladly give them blood,
a kidney, and move mountains for
them. I see these people anywhere
between once per week to once per
month or so, depending on how
hectic our lives are. The majority
of the other folks in my life fit into
the Party Posse category. These
are the people I happily invite to
a gathering in my home, or see
out on the town, or run into on a
sweaty B-Line during rush hour
occasionally. There are about 40
people in this category.

Second to last, no list of this
sort would be complete without
considering enemies, of which—I
think— I have zero. That might
have changed yesterday. Which
brings me to this week in Purge-
atory.

The final category: Facebook.

There is overlap between the
aforementioned groups and the
Facebook group, but as you and |
both know, Facebook has brought
into our lives a whole new beast,
the Facebook Friend.

After Emily notified me she had
purged two real friends from her life
this year, I felt inspired. This week, I
Facebook Friend-purged.

Going into the task, I had 326
“friends.” In comparison to some
of my Facebook friends who have
upwards of 1500 friends, and some
friends who have under 50 friends
(hey, I don’t mind social networking
with my mom), I’d say my count is
pretty average, but I’m obviously
not that popular.

As with my last mass-purge
(e.g. two weeks ago), I found it
helpful to have a criteria to guide
my Unfriending. If I could say the
following to the friend, he or she
would get cut:

1. [don’t know you.

2. I don’t like you.

3. I don’t want to invite you to
anything.

4, Inever see you.

I don’t want to see you.

6. You inundate my News
Feed with terrible grammar
and incorrect punctuation.

7. You inundate my News
Feed with updates about
Farmtown or Spaceville or
Mallopolis.

8. You don’t actually even use
Facebook.

9. I don’t care that your car
broke down and you are
pissed or that you are
waiting, like, forever, in the
Tim Horton’s line for your
double double.

10. You don’t know me.

11. You don’t like me.

12. You don’t want to invite me
to anything.

13. You never see me.

14. You don’t want to see me.

a

 

15. More drama would come
of Unfriending you than
simply remaining friends
with you.

With that, I took to
Unfriending. Oddly enough, it
was a time-consuming task, not
because of second-guessing the
repercussions of deleting these
people, but because Facebook
makes it difficult to delete these
people!

In the old days, I recall a page
with a list of friends and a check-
box beside each friend. You could
simply scroll through the friends,
check the box beside the friend,
scroll to the bottom of the page, and
hit Unfriend. Easy! Now, you have
to click each friend individually
and Unfriend each individually.
Next, Facebook notifies you that
by Unfriending this person, said
person is not unsubscribed from
your updates, so you have to do
that separately by blocking them.

In a word? Ridiculous! Also,
time-wasting!

I didn’t have the patience to go
through the blocking fiasco as well;
the point of the purge was to get the
friend-count down. And I did!

On another note, Emily is
chucking stuff again after taking it
easy for the past few weeks. Em, it’s
good to have you back!

And now, I give you the list.
Here’s the rundown of what (and
who) left our lives this week.

Emily:

1 purse

1 hoodie

3 underthings
6 tops

1 skirt

2 living friends

Laurel:

1 pair of dress pants

34 Facebook Friends (who have
in turn, may now be termed
Enemies; I guess there’s only
one way to find out)

Days in Purge-atory: 72

Collective weekly target: 14

Items collectively purged this
week: 49

Items that didn’t actually leave
the apartment: 0

Total items purged this week:
49

Total items purged to date: 250

 

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610 Colnmtie oie

 

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