Like Marty McFly watching family members disappear from photos

By adamg on Mon, 03/30/2009 - 9:11am

Joe explains why being de-friended by the ex-girlfriend on Facebook is just about as painful of a trivial thing you can imagine for us Gen-Xers.

Topics:

Relationships

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Comments

Was that more or less

By got2trotlibrarian on Mon, 03/30/2009 - 9:32am.

Was that more or less painful than the headline that comes through the feed to all your friends: "Joe and [ex-gf's name] have ended their relationship."

I imagine that the absolute

By neilv on Mon, 03/30/2009 - 1:02pm.

I imagine that the absolute worst is when the site cheerfully informs you that your ex-SO is now seeing someone else.

Yet another reason I stay far away from those sites.

The first thing I think of

By ShadyMilkMan on Mon, 03/30/2009 - 9:45am.

The first thing I think of when someone pushes me over the line is to head to facebook and decide what to do with them. Should I delete them, should I restrict them? I know it sounds petty but its part of our universe right now. I also check facebook to see if someone is annoyed with me as well.

Nothing is sadder in facebook world then watching a friend go from in a relationship, to its complicated, back to a relationship, then finally single and seeing their index photo change accordingly. That is why many people I know do not even use the in a relationship tag until they are engaged, its too much drama for some people.

Facebook Ruins Lives

By YearOfJoe on Mon, 03/30/2009 - 10:51am.

Hey folks, thanks for reading the blog and commenting.

Got2Trot: Luckily, I had that feature turned off. The only thing noticeable was that my profile went from "Joe is in a relationship with X" to "Joe is in a relationship" to nada. Why doesn't Facebook allow you to customize it? Something along the lines of "Joe just got kicked in the balls by X"...

Milkman: Truer words have never been spoken.

it's complicated

By Spatch on Mon, 03/30/2009 - 12:10pm.

Why doesn't Facebook allow you to customize it? Something along the lines of "Joe just got kicked in the balls by X"...

Well, anything's better than "It's complicated."

Actually, the one thing about the notifications that always get people is the present tense. Someone finally decides to update their profile and you get a notification that says "Jim is now married" and everybody goes "Wait, what? Didn't you get married in 2003? I was there! Is this something new?"

All because of the word "now". It's happened more times to be coincidence.

How about the poor sap who

By ShadyMilkMan on Mon, 03/30/2009 - 12:13pm.

How about the poor sap who was listed as being married and could not figure out how to link with his wife who just recently joined facebook. He removed the married status and then connected to his wife but in the mean time had broadcast to his hundreds of friends that he was now single! Luckily the wife had a sense of humor about it, but I really felt bad for my friend because for months he was deflecting rumors that him and his wife had a falling out.

Poor Sap?

By SwirlyGrrl on Mon, 03/30/2009 - 12:29pm.

I'd say he was a truly lucky sap, because he happened to marry a woman who understood just how important the whole thing was in reality (read: not very) and how easy it was to make such an error, and laughed it off.