Is It Rude To Unfollow/Unfriend? What Are The Rules?

Photo: NZexporter

If you are following a lot of people on Twitter or Facebook then your news feed tends to get quite noisy. And busy. And to be honest, full of quite a lot of stuff that really you aren't all that interested in.

But the problem is, these people followed you, so you were polite and followed them back (or on Facebook you accepted their friend request) so if you Unfollow or Unfriend them isn't that just a bit rude? Just a teeny weeny bit?

Here's a question for you. If you bump into someone at the supermarket who you haven't seen for years - you might stop and have a good old natter, maybe swap phone numbers and say 'we must catchup'. But after that chance meeting, you don't really have much to say to each other. Will you actually call them? Probably not. And why? Because your life has changed and you are into different things now. Doesn't mean you don't like them, just means you have a lot of other stuff crammed into your life already which takes priority.

Same with Twitter or Facebook. If there is someone there that you used to engage with when you first connected, but not so much anymore.... well maybe its just that you are into different things? And if you aren't engaging with someone and you have different interests then really whats the point in being connected?

I do periodic culls of Twitter and Facebook. On Twitter I also use lists - you don't need to be following someone to list them - so that's one way of grouping them off to one side and taking them out of my main feed. On Facebook, I restrict it to keeping in touch with friends and family (sorry to those people whose friend requests I have never accepted - now you know why). Doesn't mean I don't like these people - just that we don't have common interests right now.

Everyone changes - if we all stayed the same then we'd be boring.

Its not rude. Its not the end of the world. Its just life.

And you will probably enjoy checking your Facebook and Twitter feeds a lot more when its not cluttered up with stuff you don't want to hear about.          

    

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