new technology creates new rudeness

So, since I now have a single reader (thanks to the lovely Liz), I have been encouraged to update. And update I will.

First, I bought the J Brand cargo pants in New York at Barney's. Bad decisions happen at 61st and Madison. I totally cannot afford them (but will eventually be able to pay for them with rabbit poo money, since I obligingly clean up my neighbor's rabbit-poo caked house for $10 a visit), but I love them and they are fab. My best friend also has them in blue, so it was a matter of fate that I buy them.

Also, in brief, post-Glee Live show at Radio City last Sunday (because I am a big old nerdy mess), I met half the cast and it was glorious. I hugged Finn (!!!), told Kurt I love him, had a long conversation with Brittany (who liked my dress) and met Tina and the 2 male dancers on the show.


again, sideways. sorry.

Also, before this, I ate at Bar Americain, and had amazing duck. I fucking love duck. And a champagne cocktail, with, combined with wine, got me surprisingly drunk. So I was drunk, at Glee, with 8 year olds. It was, at first, a bad situation.

But this is not what this post is about. This post is about simple etiquette in a complicated world. Most people say please and thank you, occasionally hold doors, and, unless you are a native Philadelphian or New Yorker, are generally polite to random strangers, elderly relatives, your friends and family, and the like. But why do we find it so easy to be ridiculously awful to people we know well through the most impersonal medium possible?

I speak, of course, of Facebook. I will admit, I am a self-confessed Facebook junkie. I check it on my computer and my iPod and read my newsfeed like a creepy fiend, even when it's a post from someone I either don't give a shit about or haven't spoken to in years. However, recent events have kind of driven me to reevaluate how I feel about Facebook. It's a weird medium that allows people to be totally rude to others with a kind of screen between them - you would never walk up to a friend and tell them that you're essentially done with them forever, would you?

I'm referring to the phenomenon known as "defriending," "unfriending," whatever. I have a story. I've found that a few non-essentials have defriended me, and I've defriended people as well - but mostly just ex-boyfriends of friends I never actually knew. I've never defriended someone out of pure spite.

I had a roommate this past year. Though I have my own opinions after living with her for an entire year, I'll take the high road and keep my thoughts on her personality and life choices to myself (or at least, not blast her shit on the Interwebs). As a roommate, she was far from ideal. She advertised herself as clean, but never once cleaned our shared bathroom, and at some point wouldn't even flush the toilet if her shit didn't go down the first time. (I so wish I was joking.) She left her hair, which was all over the rest of the apartment as well, in the drain. Whatever. She was not a good roommate.

However, we were decent friends for a long time, and so I usually just let those things go. Things got tenser at the end of the year, and after we both aired our grievances Festivus-style in a screaming match, things were weird, but we agreed to live in peace. The day before I went home, the electric bill came. I asked for her half, and she was too busy to comply. I sent the whole check in and asked for her to send her half to me.

A few weeks later, I wrote on her Facebook wall reminding her to send in her half, and she responded nastily, telling me she had sent her half directly to the electric company. One day later, I visited her profile, only to find that I had the option to add her as a friend. I had been defriended.

Why the fuck is this fucking acceptable? And why does anyone think it's a reasonable reaction to almost anything? Yes, I understand maybe defriending a boyfriend who cheated on you, or a friend who stole your boyfriend. In fact, I think probably instances of cheating or straight-up heartbreak are the ONLY ones where defriending is acceptable. My other old roommate, who enjoyed vomiting in our joint trashcan, reading my IMs to find nasty things I said about her, and stealing my things, also defriended me, and even though I couldn't fucking stand her, I felt kind of hurt and weird about it.

I think it comes down to one essential thing when you're defriended - you end up wondering, am I really so bad that someone has to go to my profile and actively make the decision to cut me from their lives? Are my weekly status posts so grating on their nerves? Am I really such a piece of shit?

The pukey alcoholic roommate was never my friend, so her defriending briefly bothered me, but didn't hurt me. The more recent roommate's defriending definitely did. We were actual friends. We went grocery shopping together, sat and watched two seasons of True Blood obsessively in our living room, talked about our boyfriends and our pasts and our relationships, and bought each other birthday presents (for the record, I kind of want the Marc by Marc Jacobs daisy-shaped ring with the perfume solid inside that I gave her last May back). We lived together for an entire year. Sure, we're not best friends anymore, but I would never have defriended her - because it is a deeply nasty thing to do, and is far less innocuous than it seems. As I said, a person has to actively go to the other's profile and choose to defriend them. It is extremely personal, and it sucks. It totally blows.

End rant. I know this went on far too long. But new technology creates new ways for people to hurt each other, and having been hit with it, I am less than pleased with that development. In the end, people are just bullshit.