Twitter and Facebook are great social networking tools, as I have blogged about many, many times before. For the most part, they are positive applications you can use in order to communicate and brand yourself, as well as keep tabs on what your friends are doing. But there are times when I find myself having to exercise my right to unfriend or unfollow people.
I pretty much follow everyone who follows me and engages me in conversation. I am not a Twitter snob and I believe in reciprocation when it comes to following people and conversing. But there have been instances where I had to unfollow people who didn’t bring anything positive to my feed.
I am not into those who speak nonstop about themselves, who use profanity incessantly, who do nothing but complain, or just speak negatively about everyone and everything. I also unfollow those who never seem to speak even though I have stuck my neck out to speak to them on more than one occasion. Social networking is a two way street.
I have yet to unfriend someone on Facebook. For the most part, the people who are my friends in real life are my Facebook friends, so if there is a beef or misunderstanding between us, that is usually fixed offline.
Why do you unfollow someone on Twitter or unfriend someone on Facebook? What are your requirements of a follow or friend?
I generally unfollow people who's tweets just irritate me. If I get tired of seeing what they have to say because it's dumb, creepy, or just plain annoying then they have to go. I also unfollow people who flood my timeline with a million one sentence tweets.
I also forgot about the people on Twitter who use it as a dating service. I unfollow them as well.
I unfollow people for the two extremes: never tweeting or tweeting too much. Of course, tweeting too much is subjective because it depends on if I like what they’re saying or if it’s just annoying. I unfriend people who don’t say anything or whose status updates are always boring. I am not in a contest to have the most facebook friends. I weed people out every few months.
I unfollow misogynists, people that flood with random letters because they have nothing else to say, people that post the exact same thing over and over (aspiring rappers, click this link so I can get paid), people that only talk about their SO or kids.
I unfollow anyone repeatedly posting unfactual propaganda, (from the right or the left). It takes much to offend me, but I do unfollow for foul language if it is extreme or constant. I think I'm pretty choosy about who I follow in the first place so I don't unfollow often.
Facebook isn't much my thing, my Mom has unfriended some people and even ended up deleting her entire Facebook account after repeated arguments about Heath Care Reform.
I've had to unfollow some people, as well. I no longer have Facebook (my page is just deactivated so I might be back), but on Twitter… If someone is just too negative, or complains, or seems "mean", or they don't talk about anything that benefits others or they tweet TOO MUCH about sex or curse too much… they have to go. I'd feel guilty at first, like I was the one being mean, but that isn't what I am there for. Sometimes, it just has to be done…
Ditto to every comment here! The ones I unfollow the most are people that RT and say positive things and then before you know it, they’re complaining about something they’re obviously not doing anything about! Great post! 🙂
Amen. You articulated what we all feel. 🙂
I forgot to add that I have also unfollowed a lot of celebrities on Twitter. Not because of anything they've said or done but because I find it much more interesting to follow people who are engaging and whom I've met or COULD meet.