Erica Glasier: Oversocialized! Social media & interactive futurism from sunny Winnipeg

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, & the social media that fulfill 'em. Biggie size available on Flickr.

Prologue: Today the New Oxford American Dictionary announced “unfriend” is the 2009 Word of the Year. May it not be a portent of things to come.

Gird yourself for a mortifying tale of techno treachery, friends. Girded?

Ok. In my weekly perusal of Facebook friend’s friends to see who I might be missing being friends with (it’s an orgy of friendship up in here), I came across an ex-coworker who I just adore. We’ve been Facebook friends forever, since that first blissful wave of friendings back in the 1980’s. I thought “I shall be sociable and leave him a wall howdy!”, and scrolled through my friend list to find him. How nice of me, spreading wall sunshine. Scroll scroll. Wait. What the heck. He. Wasn’t. There.

Like dropping your laptop in the bathtub (both personally dismaying and electrically imprudent), a cold shock of disbelief rippled through my being. It appeared, I cringed, that I had been UNFRIENDED.

Ouch.

Now, I could have assimilated the sting of rejection and got on with my life had this been your run of the mill Facebook-friend-you-don’t-really-know-but-they-know-your-other-friend-and-you-met-them-once-outside-Starbucks kind of thing, but this was an actual capital-F Friend. Someone I like! Someone whose positivity and energy shines through their status updates like the glint off a unicorn’s horn! What went so very wrong that he couldn’t at least just “hide” me?

This reminded me of an ominous moment two weeks ago: I had noticed my number of friends had decreased by one. If this ever happens to you (may it never happen to you), you’ll find it’s super hard to look at a list and see who’s not there. I uneasily chalked it up to some brand who’d started as a friend and made the conversion over to a fan page, just cleaning things up. Yes. That was it. Some unsavvy brand. I considered futilely updating my status to ask the universe who had dumped me, knowing the dumper wouldn’t see it and didn’t even care to know that they had broken my heart. I put it out of my conscious mind, though it still gnawed at my dreams in the form of repeat visions of showing up for the prom without a date. And now I knew who didn’t want to dance with me.

So what courses of action does an unjustly jilted Facebooker have?

a) Suck it up and soldier on in the knowledge that you are so boring, irritating or offensive that even normally generous-natured unicorns don’t want to know what you’re up to.

b) Message the friendship denier and politely inquire why they now hated your guts.

Option A sounded like a prescription for rather detrimental life-long anxiety over to exactly what extent and in what fashion was I boring, irritating or offensive (or—horrors!—a combination of the three), so I manned up and messaged the former friend.

He was very surprised! What could have happened? Facebook must have unfriended us somehow! Many winky emoticons and text-based hugs later, my bruised ego slathered in Polysporin and a band-aid, we were friends again (he having promptly sent a request when made “aware” of the situation). A wave of relief washed over my virtual social life and all was well with the world once again, my personal capital reaffirmed.

So why the acute teenage pain in the feelings? The terror provoked by the idea of being unfriended is intrinsic to our psychological makeup as social beings; Maslow ranked belonging and friendship right up there just above not having malaria. Technology has certainly intensified the importance of the friend scorecard, putting it right there in your face that someone may not like you. In the olden days, they just ducked behind a bush when they saw you heading over and you were mercifully none-the-wiser. Now they can emphatically and publicly sacrifice you to the Whopper gods, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Well, except pester them to take you back.

In my case, of course, it was just a wacky Facebook bug. Yes, a wacky Facebook bug.