Top Reason for Facebook Unfriending Is Too Many Useless Posts 300
alphadogg writes "The No. 1 reason why friends dump friends on Facebook is when they get fed up seeing too many useless posts, according to new research out of the University of Colorado Denver Business School. Posts about polarizing subjects such as politics and religion as well as inappropriate and racist comments also sever many Facebook relationships, according to Christopher Sibona, a PhD student in the Computer and Science and Information Systems program. 'Researchers spend a lot of time examining how people form friendships online but little is known on how those relationships end,' said Sibona, whose research will be published in January by the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. 'Perhaps this will help us develop a theory of the entire cycle of friending and unfriending.' Sibona surveyed more than 1,500 Facebook users to get to the bottom of why people dump each other. Not surprisingly, people who flood others with posts are at great risk of being unfriended. 'The 100th post about your favorite band is no longer interesting,' he said." Samzenpus likes this.
100th my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
'The 100th post about your favorite band is no longer interesting,' he said."
The first post wasn't interesting. It just took 100 for it to reach the point of "I'd rather not see anything from you at all."
Re:100th my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ditto. I wonder if these unfrienders don't know how to block (lol), or if they are so offended that blocking isn't enough (lol).
Re:100th my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
I dropped my Facebook account last month.
Facebook is teh suck.
Most of the people I "friended" were high school classmates who live in a different state and I haven't seen in decades.
Maybe I am sort of cold (my wife calls me "Dexter") but I really don't care to see a constant stream of medical drama and pictures of people's inbred rodent children.
(LOL@rodent)
Re:100th my ass (Score:4, Interesting)
teh suck
(LOL@rodent)
I think you managed to give a very good example of why people get unfriended....Really, dribble like that is why I don't have my 16 year old cousin friended.
I find Facebook good for two things: Catching wind of social events that the group of younger people I hang around with organize. (I went back to grad school a lot later than those kids who just pushed on through. They grew up a facebook generation, I did not.) The other is keeping in touch with my relatives that all live 1000 miles away. If you're getting spammed with stupid crap, you have two very easy options: Unfriend them or block their status updates. It's really not hard. Nobody needs 400+ friends. Pick a close few, and viola, 95% of the crap is gone.
outsourcing (Score:5, Funny)
I delegated my facebook account to a third party. She can let me know if anything worthwile has occured in my social parabola. (also maintain any farms, etc. I haven't actually looked at facebook in months.
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I delegated my facebook account to a third party. She can let me know if anything worthwile has occured in my social parabola. (also maintain any farms, etc. I haven't actually looked at facebook in months.
Which reminds me, your directrix just called to tell me your latus rectum is about to be targeted by a burning mirror due to your lack of focus. Of course this may have been hyperbole on her part.
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Of course this may have been hyperbole on her part.
hyperbole or hyperbola?
Re:outsourcing (Score:4, Funny)
I delegated my facebook account to a third party. She can let me know if anything worthwile has occured in my social parabola. (also maintain any farms, etc. I haven't actually looked at facebook in months.
So you're married, then?
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Exactly the same here. My wife manages the family facebook account and I don't have to look at my sister's latest 500 pic upload. I swear, she is getting kickbacks from RAID array manufacturers.
Still friends? (Score:2)
Wouldn't that mean that nobody is friends anymore?
Ta dit boom.
Re:Still friends? (Score:5, Insightful)
I just click the little X in the corner of their useless status update. This hides everything they say/do without them feeling virtually offended. Win!
Re:Still friends? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't feel the need to protect their feelings; I am like this with family as well, online or in person. If they can't keep it straight, I do it for them and it gives them a bit of feedback that people might just be fed up with their shit. I ESPECIALLY do this if I hear "tealiban", "demoncrat", "teabagger" or any other term meant to polarize politically/socially whether I support their view or not.
Re:Still friends? (Score:5, Funny)
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OMG you guys! (Score:5, Informative)
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Damnit, your friends are WAY more interesting than mine. Many of my Facebook posts are emo people posting song lyrics, or my cousin saying I LOOOVE THIS! I'm sure he's going to end up gay despite being part of a devout Christian family. Oh yeah and my Christian friends always saying how amazing god is gets old pretty fast too since I stopped believing in such things :p Just a shame that I actually still like some of the updates these people do. A smart politics/religion filter would be amazing.
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I do believe in such things and I still get sick of Christians always saying how amazing God is.
I know. I got it. I friended God on Facebook to get updates straight from him, I don't need you to re-post everything. What, God didn't send you a friend request?
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I like just posting my own Bible quotes when I see them starting to gain critical mass in my friends. Stuff like 2 Kings 2:23:
(2:23) "As he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head."
(2:24) "And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them."
It's always fun to get the respons
What exactly is the middle ground? (Score:3, Interesting)
If stimulating debate over politics and religion are too "polarizing" (takes too much thinking?) and some topics are too banal, what exactly are the middle ground topics that keep 500M people addicted to FB?
Re:What exactly is the middle ground? (Score:5, Funny)
Cute pictures of cats and babies. Preferable pictures of both cats AND babies. And bacon.
Re:What exactly is the middle ground? (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like that would make a pretty good sandwich...
What? why are you unfriending me!
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Yeah I think I lost a friend or too when I made my post along the lines of "80% authentic pork tongue? YES PLEASE!"
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It isn't "stimulating debate" they find offensive. It's pointless, irrational ranting. How many times do you need to be told "[Glen Beck | Obama] is a turd" even if you agree?
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There really are some adorable videos of my nephew stumbling through the ABC's and talking about Lady Gaga, and I do love a good political/philosophical discussion, but ten posts daily on "What [religious zealot] says about Christian relationships" aren't exactly stimulating debate. In fact, I find that facebook stifles interesting conversation in favor of movie quotes/song lyrics/dumb quips/travel plans. That said, there are about three or four now-distant friends that I keep in contact with very tenuous
Re:What exactly is the middle ground? (Score:4, Insightful)
what exactly are the middle ground topics that keep 500M people addicted to FB?
Who's sleeping with whom.
Re:What exactly is the middle ground? (Score:5, Funny)
Too polarizing= "God punished the ELCA on the day of their gay vote by sending a tornado that caused huge damage in Minneapolis where they held the vote. I hope that sends a message that HE doesn't want gays in HIS church!!"
Too banal= "Thinking about making some scrambled eggs."
Re:What exactly is the middle ground? (Score:4, Interesting)
I was at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in Salt Lake City a few years ago. One of our campaigns is "Standing on the Side of Love," that stands in solidarity with oppressed groups like GLBT and immigrants, etc. The big banner we had hanging from the convention center was struck by lightning. Good thing I don't believe in god or I might have wondered if I'd misunderstood what Jesus would do.
Re:What exactly is the middle ground? (Score:5, Informative)
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If stimulating debate over politics and religion are too "polarizing" (takes too much thinking?) and some topics are too banal, what exactly are the middle ground topics that keep 500M people addicted to FB?
Themselves.
People don't socialize to debate (Score:2)
People socialize to maintain relationships, to know what's going on in each other's lives, and provide support, encouragement, and a laugh or two. This works online and offline. It's not really complicated.
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So, Facebook is the new Slashdot???
Isn't this just summarizing twitter? (Score:2)
Twitter is all posts.. all useless.....
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Slashdot comments are all posts.. all useless.....
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What about those who refuse to join? (Score:3, Interesting)
Can someone tell me the major reason as to why those capable of joining Facebook refuse to join?
Disclaimer: I am one of those who refuse to join Facebook. My reason is simple: I do not see what joining this social network would do to improve my life. In fact, I believe it would simply complicate it. Am I wrong?
Re:What about those who refuse to join? (Score:5, Informative)
Why would it complicate your life? If you get obsessed with it I suppose it would.
I held off for some time but finally gave in because I got an invite from a friend overseas and decided this would be a convenient way to stay in touch. I've rekindled relationships with a few long lost friends. Nothing profound but it's nice to be in touch with people I haven't seen in a while. Not many, I'll admit; I ignore the vast majority of people on the list. It's simply another tool for facilitating communication.
Fortunately, I don't have any people on my list who are compelled to make political posts. The worst I get are the usual inanities; idiotic comments that make no sense to anyone but those in the know and stupid inspirational messages that pretend to have figured out the meaning of life where countless philosophers over the last few millennia could not. Whenever the frequency of dump posts rises above my ability to tolerate them I simply block that individual's posts.
A big peeve of mine are those who simply friend people to grow their list, like there's a prize for having a huge number of friends. I had a classmate I hadn't really seen since elementary school friend a cousin of mine he had never met and who's living somewhere in Europe. It's ridiculous, but then it's nothing to get worked up about.
I will visit on a regular basis, but I don't post much at all. If Facebook has had any impact at all, I would have to admit it's been more positive than negative. Somehow I feel dirty admitting that, but it's the truth.
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Right on. Especially with a decent facebook client on my phone, it functions almost like a convergence of various online services that I've been using for years. Email, instant messaging, event planning, photo sharing, etc.
While it's certainly got its own annoying quirks, there are relatively simple (if not always straightforward) ways of dealing with most of them, and if you aren't afraid of potentially offending a few people, then you can keep your friend list limited to what you find useful.
Much of what
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Can someone tell me the major reason as to why those capable of joining Facebook refuse to join?
Disclaimer: I am one of those who refuse to join Facebook. My reason is simple: I do not see what joining this social network would do to improve my life. In fact, I believe it would simply complicate it. Am I wrong?
It only complicates your life if you use it in an unhealthy way. Check it maybe once a week and try and keep it halfway updated. Granted it's probably more interesting for people who had it starting out in high school because in twenty years they'll be able to see "X, from your highschool, just married Y, also from your highschool..." X and Y may not have been close friends of yours, thus you don't really keep up with them, but it's still interesting to see things like that. Also, maybe an old friend of
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My major problem with facebook is that people expect YOU to use it as much as they do after you give in. I had an account for all of a month because of this. I'd get phone calls from people talking to me about shit I A) couldn't care less about and b) they expected me to be aware of because it had been posted on facebook sometime in the last 24 hours or so.
I deleted my facebook account, I've lost touch with those people, and my life is better for it. If I still had a facebook account I would certainly know
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In fact, I believe it would simply complicate it. Am I wrong?
I believe you are wrong. I joined as an experiment for 6 months. It was a complete waste of time. Burned about as much time as an addiction to at least two weekly tv series, which is quite an investment (in other words I took my trial seriously and worked hard) After 6 months, evaluated my results, which was zilch, and dumped facebook. Frankly, haven't missed it.
At least on slashdot you can learn something occasionally, or get a valuable reference to something new or cool.
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Can someone tell me the major reason as to why those capable of joining Facebook refuse to join?
Kinda like joining a cult. Getting in is *easy* and peers tend to pressure you for the "joys" of it.
Then you are bound to new "social" duties: hear/see things and respond to people you had little interest in seeing before. You're trapped at a IRL yearly family party, except the gossiping goes on 24/7 and you can't hide what you said.
Some of us rather enjoy a relationship w/ people sans 500 million others sitting on the back row (plus advertisers and 5.5 billion others when leaks spring.)
Re:What about those who refuse to join? (Score:4, Insightful)
-Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle, 1863
Replace "newspaper" with "blog" and "post-office" with "facebook" and it applies perfectly today.
I don't unfriend, I just use Hide (Score:2, Informative)
You can always click in the top right of each newsfeed link, or assign people to lists.
For example, I have different lists for each game, and have special ones for Family, the city I grew up in, the city I live in, people who go to film festivals with me, and people who have specific activities I do with them. Then I change the order of the lists so I mostly see the ones I want.
And then, if someone posts a lot of useless stuff, I just Hide PERSON on the newsfeed from them - they're still friends, I can sti
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You can always click in the top right of each newsfeed link, or assign people to lists.
Exactly what I do - but I'm guessing most people don't know much about Facebook except for friending and unfriending.
To be honest, roughly 90% of my Facebook friends are now hidden because their posts are mostly insipid prattle. I'd probably just quit Facebook, except I have to manage my department's page - and I hate to admit it, but since I'm on there anyway I don't want to be friendless. Guess I'm just insecure...
Seriously with the research (Score:2)
Is it just me or do researchers like stating the obvious.
If By "Useless" You Mean... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If By "Useless" You Mean... (Score:4, Informative)
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You know you can selectively hide all updates from any give app, don't you?
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Whoops, saw that you mentioned "Hide". But why would you unfriend someone for their apps if you don't see them at all?
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Whoops, saw that you mentioned "Hide". But why would you unfriend someone for their apps if you don't see them at all?
Some people make regular posts about items they need in their favorite games in their regular status updates too, which you see even if you've hidden their apps.
You could hide their status updates or unfriend them. Since you'll no longer be seeing anything from them either way, it comes down to whether you want them to see your activity even if you no longer care for theirs.
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I've seen some of that, and mostly those folks have found their way into my "hide" category.
The people whose updates I see aren't congruent with the people who see my updates - I have pretty selective filtering for my updates. But with very few exceptions, I keep the people on as friends even if I don't see their stuff (and they don't see mine) in case of real-world get-togethers, occasional private messages, etc. The only people I've defriended are those old school people from my past who turned out to be
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See, it's people like you, that "use" Facebook but don't know how to use it, that give it a bad name.
If you don't want to see Farmville, Mafia Wars, whatever, "Hide" that app, you'll never see another post about it.
You learn diffferent things about people online (Score:5, Interesting)
There are people I've known for years IRL who hold bizarre beliefs I'd never suspected they held, because they don't talk about them in person, but who will happily spout off about these beliefs on FB, LJ, etc. All that religious bigotry, racism, authoritarianism, etc. that people keep buttoned up in personal conversation comes out at the keyboard, even when the people making the posts know that their friends are going to be reading what they write. And yeah, that's been enough to end a few friendships for me, IRL as well as online. You want to post a hundred times about your favorite band? Okay, no problem, I'll just skip past it. You want to talk about how all Muslims are terrorists and all black people are criminals and Barack Hussein Obama is an al-Qaeda robot sent back from the future to terminate American liberties and ensure the rise of the Kenyan cyber-hegemony? Bye now, and don't let the virtual door hit you in the virtual ass on the way out.
Re:You learn diffferent things about people online (Score:4, Funny)
No kidding -- and I can't even unfriend my wife's family without it being awkward at holidays.
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...Barack Hussein Obama is an al-Qaeda robot sent back from the future to terminate American liberties and ensure the rise of the Kenyan cyber-hegemony...
Wait! Is the Sarah Connor Chronicles coming back for a third season?!?
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Wait! Is the Sarah Connor Chronicles coming back for a third season?!?
I just wish.
I've been watching on DVD recently, which is probably why that particular idea occurred to me ... but honestly, I'll bet you could post what I wrote on Free Republic and there are thousands of people who would believe it and repeat it far and wide, and it would be on Fox News within a week.
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When you get down to it, everyone is a nutter. Except me.
Re:You learn diffferent things about people online (Score:4, Insightful)
I like having friends who have different political and religious beliefs from mine. It keeps my on my toes, makes me examine my own beliefs, and can provide hours of entertaining conversation. But I do not enjoy being shouted at by crazy people. A big part of having an online life is learning when things have gone over that line.
Re:You learn diffferent things about people online (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you challenge them on these beliefs? Do you tell them that their beliefs (and hatred and bigotry) are why you're no longer willing to consider them a friend?
While I doubt that your friends are deliberately trolling you (or others) by posting extreme things which they do not actually believe, it may be that they've never thought it through and seen the holes... or perhaps never had to defend the position. It's possible that challenging them may make them ignore you, or even re-hide their inner beliefs, but some of them might really be able to grow in their perception of the world.
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Oh, I'll try to have a reasonable debate, if the opinion is being expressed by someone I like and respect. But all too often it just turns into a pointless shouting match.
Slashdotters love to complain about the low quality of debate here, but honestly, in comparison to most of the rest of the internet, the tone here looks like a model of formal rhetoric. Facebook ... not so much.
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If you could reason with crazy people, there would be no crazy people.
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Re:You learn diffferent things about people online (Score:5, Insightful)
minor "offenses". Like disliking having a mosque near Ground Zero
Religious bigotry is no minor offense.
It was easier for me to just unfriend Facebook (Score:2)
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Seriously, if I unfriended everyone who posted inane junk on their wall, I'd have no friends. It's easier to just quit Facebook.
That worked for me. Oh, by the way, here is my 243rd post proudly declaring that I'm going to the gym to work out today.
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Hey world, I just typed "apt-get update" on one of my servers. Freaking amazing huh? Especially since I run testing and upgrade about once a week. Well you all stay tuned and I'll let you know next week when I run "apt-get update". Wasn't "Americas next top idol model" just super amazing last night?!! ?? I can't believe he said that to her after she said that to him.
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OK my little facebook minions, just posting my status from my IPAD YES MY MY MY IPAD NOT YOURS BECAUSE YOU DON"T HAVE ONE that here I am again at school dropping off the kids. Yes just like every day from the previous month where I posted each and every time. Oh my kids are so cute. You all stay tuned for the next 8 months or so for each time I drop the kids off at school, except for christmas holiday. Oh and by the way here is a completely irrelevant quote from $my_religious_diety or $my_political_par
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Hi facebook pals, especially the kid that ate lunch with me once in the fall semester of 8th grade whom I haven't seen since, you know you are such a special friend to me. Well here we are at Wednesday hump day so I figured all 548 of my facebook friends, especially the ones that live more than 1000 miles away, want to hear that I'm going to eat dinner at McDonalds dollar value meal tonight! Any of you single ladies whom love a big spender, you just feel free to dress up and join me for dinnre. Yea for m
Prawn (Score:2)
You are a Prawnus Maximus.
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someone is studying this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone spent the time to determine that if you are a polarizing inappropriate racist you won't have many friends?
Re:someone is studying this? (Score:4, Funny)
Events (Score:2)
This is why I don't get Twitter (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why I don't get Twitter. There, uselessness of the post is not only encouraged, but also enforced by post length limitations, and by the lack of relevance-filtered feed. It's pretty much white noise.
Re:This is why I don't get Twitter (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously you don't get Twitter, because you should follow things that interest you and aren't noise. Now it's very likely that people you friend on Facebook are friended because they are actual real life friends or family. I don't have a social obligation to follow my family on Twitter, but I can subscribe to accounts that I feel are not noise, and remove ones that are. If you're following noise on Twitter (or Facebook, really) it's your own damn fault.
Reasons I unfriend people (Score:3, Interesting)
I get lots of friendship requests from people I knew in the past, such as high school classmates. I usually accept these, thinking stupidly that these people actually want to talk to me or god forbid, catch up on old times.
Most of the time, I accept these and send a message asking what they've been up to and so on. These messages almost always go unanswered.
Seriously, what's the point of "friending" (is that a verb now?) someone if you have no intent to communicate?
Of course, we've already beaten to death the constant barrage of inane game and application request posts, which are equally annoying.
Dislike button... (Score:3, Insightful)
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A "dislike" button is just going to have them sending you a message going "why didn't you like that?" anyway, so you might as well just avoid the rigmarole and tell the exactly what the problem is right from the start.
Ignore user is easy (Score:2)
I forget the setting but that is what Google is for.
Although this is best for people who have nothing useful to say. The worst is when 1 post in 100 is critical.
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Currently it's an "X" button that appears to the right of each post when you mouse over it. Click and you'll get options to Hide posts from that user, or from that application if it's an app-generated message (eg. Farmville crud).
How can I "like" this??? (Score:2)
Gotta say... (Score:2)
Cute.
Hidden (Score:2)
De-friending seems harsh for only a constant barrage of drivel. Just use the Hide feature and most of the drivel is gone. Especially the Game related as you can choose to hide the game messages or the person. Just pick the game and you still get the real messages and keep your friend.
Only De-friended someone once when a friend got divorced and I did not care to hear their ex's bs.
Unnecessary (Score:2)
It is possible to change your settings so it won't show posts from certain people in your news feed.
merc (Score:2)
liked this.
Accosted by Poor Taste (Score:4, Interesting)
I defriended someone for movie reviews. Not because they were filled with spoilers. Because they were awful. I take movies and film making very seriously (even the low/no budget films). I used to work around low budget films, I have friends that still do.
She would say stuff about how indy or arthouse films were hard to follow so she turned them off 10 minutes into them (or just avoided them), but in the next post would praise whatever summer blockbuster she saw that day. She actually said several of my favorite acclaimed films were stupid but then posted a raving review of how Transformers 2 was the best movie she ever saw.
I thought she wasn't serious at first, but after several of months of seeing it, I realized she was the reason Micheal Bay keeps getting to make more movies. I didn't want to be a witness to that.
Babies (Score:2, Insightful)
You know what pisses me off with FB? (Score:3, Funny)
When you're trying to track down old female friends from school, but they've changed their surname since they got married, and now they have a picture of a baby up as their profile pic. How the fuck are you supposed to know it's them?! How are you supposed to know whether to add them or not? Grrrr! Attention, bitches! Not everyone thinks your baby is cute! We just want to get a look at you and see how well you held off the flab over the years so we can gloat about how we're living a more fulfilling life than you are!
The most useless (Score:5, Insightful)
... posts are those stupid likey-link-farm "likes". You can't comment on them, and you can't hide them unless you hide everything that your "friend" posts.
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But likey farm links aren't apps, though. Your only choice is to hide the user, or report it as spam.
Which actually sounds like good idea, now that I think about it.
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No, this is Idle. Derp.
Social Construction Theory (Score:2)
TL;DR Now you
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Not for any longer than it takes to exit the channel.
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I stopped speaking to my mum because her Facebook posts were too boring.
Only kidding, her posts are usually way funnier than the rest of Facebook (unintentionally).