Deleting someone on fb

[littlemiss3]

NC as could be quite outing.

Let me start by saying I know how trivial and petty this is but it's put me in an awkward position!

I have a group of friends that I met when pregnant with my first. We've developed really good friendships and keep in touch often as our dcs are the same age and enjoy playing together. We've done a lot of family days out as well so we are all on friendly terms with each other's DH's as well.

Recently my Dh went on Facebook and realised one of the women had deleted him. He's taken great offence to this (he can be quite sensitive to this type of thing) as he has always made an effort with them and never been rude or anything to her.

To be completely honest with the situation DH can sometimes be a bit of a nightmare on Facebook, he hardly ever posts on his own wall or anything but is a nightmare for posting on football pages and can often use awful language and this will sometimes show up on my news feed so I'm guessing it shows up on his other friends too.

Now I feel like I'm in a bit of an awkward situation, I think by deleting somebody on Facebook these days you are clearly making a point that you don't like them. Surely it would have been easier to just unfollow him or change your settings so you don't see his posts? Now he says he doesn't want to meet up with them again (when we can!) because she's made it very clear what she thinks. What should I do? Ignore it and just not take husband with me when we have meet ups? Or say something and risk falling out?

In this day and age social media does account for a lot
To you... But maybe not to her.

Why should she keep someone who doesn't post on there?
Why are you policing who she should be friends with?
Your husband comes across as the childish one here.

he hardly ever posts on his own wall or anything but is a nightmare for posting on football pages and can often use awful language and this will sometimes show up on my news feed so I'm guessing it shows up on his other friends too.

FB is so bloody bizzare and inconsiderate with some of its choices. I never comment on FB public posts I find interesting, because I dont want to put on a public show for all my contacts. It's embarrassing spying on other people's totally unrelated shit. The juvenile public "likes" system is bad enough, as opposed to the system on,say, WeChat where only the publisher of a posts sees total no. of responses while your contacts only see responses by mutual friends. FB only excels in raking in vast sums of money through data collection. The user experience is shit.

No one can tell you why she's deleting him. speculating is a bit pointless but unless the FB algorithms aren't working why would she be shown football page posts? If she's also into football pages presumably she accepts the language used. I don't think that sounds like the reason

I understand why he's upset op. People will always pile on these posts accusing you of being childish or saying fb is not real life etc. But fb is a form of communication, so it is understandable to be upset when someone cuts that communication with you.

One possible explanation is that she has deleted people who never update their own status. I use fb a lot, so I decided to delete some people who never posted. I did keep people who had a lot of meaning to me, or people I keep in contact with outside of fb.

why doesn't he just message and ask her why she deleted him?

@Boho7

Glad I dont have Facebook..sounds like a lot of unnecessary drama.. How exhausting x

Says the person on Mumsnet .

Your husband needs to chill. Maybe the friend doesn't know about the unfollow option, maybe she was genuinely offended by something he said, maybe she wanted to cull her list. Who really cares.

Your DH needs to get over it, are they close or interact much on Facebook? Either way she’s perfectly entitled to pick and chose who she has on Facebook, it’s doesn’t effect your friendship.

@pepsicolagirl

why doesn't he just message and ask her why she deleted him?

Nooooo, please dont do this!!! It reeks of desperation. Why does he care so much? People add and delete others all the time, and she can delete who she wants, there’s no obligation to keep anyone as a friend. What if she says I don’t want to see his sweary football posts?

Social media in no way reflects real life, you both need to grow up and realise that being a "friend" or not on facebook doesn't mean you are a friend or not in real life. Perhaps she has no interest in seeing the football posts that will appear on her feed if your DH comments on them, or for whatever other reason, if she doesn't want to see your DH's updates online she's perfectly reasonable in removing him. If you stop real contact because of that you look childish and pathetic. Take less of an interest in online "relationships" and focus more on real life friendships.

Your friend and your husband may have over reacted a bit? ( in differing ways)

I had a friend - shared hobby but never met - he lives in USA.

Hobby comments in a group - fine.

His social and political comments weren’t good - but those of his friends....... ( Wouldn’t have been surprised to see them on TV at the Jan 6 riots) And their language.

Over the years he got more and more angry.

Not happy about my normal friends seeing these etc. So I kept on silencing him, 30 days at a time.

It was really quite stressful wondering what I’d wake up to comment wise - both his own and comments on my friend’s posts. After hitting the silence button I got a month of peace!

Eventually he left FB ( too socialist) and joined parler. (Which has now shut)

I suspect your friend reacted to your husband’s football comments - but didn’t know about the silent button.

The real problem you have here is that you seem to be married to a 12 year old

I just personally wouldn't delete one particular person out of a group of people and no one else as I think it's just rather childish. If you don't like someone you can just mute them and be the bigger person

You're seriously calling them childish? When you and your husband sound less mature than some toddlers?

@littlemiss3 I have to agree with previous posters that your DH sounds massively childish and petty.

Probably not an age thing either. My DD's boyfriend, AND my friend's daughter's boyfriend are in their mid 20s, and don't give a flying fuck if someone unfriends them on facebook. But three or four 40 and 50-something men I know have been ridiculously petty and sniffy and super-offended that a few people unfriended them on facebook, even though these people had fuck-all to do with them 99.9% of the time, and a few of them, they had never even met in real life.

I know a man (early 40s,) who is always posting pics of mostly-naked women with huge greasy buttocks and huge GG size tits, and he also posts filthy (and I mean really gross and offensive) 'jokes.. He was shocked and wounded, and totally affronted, that 5 or 6 women unfriended him. Several people even reported him.

He has has his facebook account suspended 3 times, one time for 3 months. I don't know HOW he hasn't been banned for good.

He started posting stuff like 'hey, here's the REPORT button people ↘️

And here's the UNFRIEND button!!! ⬇️

He did this to try and make a point... But it was pretty stupid, because people who wanted to report or unfriend him, clearly knew how to do it already, as they'd done it. Daft twat.

I unfriended him AND blocked him about 6 months ago. I got his wife messaging me to ask what he had done wrong. (She wasn't on my friends list, and never had been, but was still able to message me...)

I blocked her too.

I think you're both massively overthinking this. I delete people from Facebook all the time. It could very well be because she sees him posting offensive rubbish on various pages. I would delete someone for similar. You can still be friends in real life without being friends on Facebook and I don't feel the need to read people's ranting, that isn't why I use social media. It could also just be that she doesn't see him as a friend and only sees you as a friend, even if you do spend time together as families. That's also fine. I don't think I'm friends with any of the husbands of my baby group friends anymore. You drift away, back to normal life, and you don't really keep in touch with people anymore. Sometimes I just don't want tangential acquaintances on Facebook anymore. Certainly from a privacy perspective, I don't really want to be sharing information about my and my children's private lives with people I don't consider close trusted friends. It doesn't mean you can't meet up and have a BBQ together. It just means she doesn't really want to have him in that part of her life. That's perfectly normal and fine.

If you can't stand her husband and she obviously can't stand yours then why do you all bother meeting up?

I cannot believe people keep track of who has and hasn't got them added on Facebook and actually lets it impact real life interactions.

"Recently my Dh went on Facebook and realised one of the women had deleted him. He's taken great offence to this (he can be quite sensitive to this type of thing) as he has always made an effort with them and never been rude or anything to her."

Sensitive to this? But not sensitive to why someone would dislike getting his "awful language" on their feed? He's not sensitive - he's self-centred.

He's being childish and if you can't stand a friend's husband I don't know why you keep him on your Facebook.

I’m with you, OP. Unless you’ve actively fallen out with someone or they’ve been beyond the pale offensive, deleting someone when you could just as easily press ‘unfollow’ is only ever done to make a point. The point usually being to either create a bit of drama, or to demonstrate that they’re so incredibly popular and busy that they just don’t have the time to scroll past a status update if they’re not interested. This friend must know your husband will spot it - so why has she chosen to delete instead of unfollow?

I don’t understand some of the comments on this thread like ‘I delete people if they don’t update their status very often’. If they don’t post, they can’t be offending you or clogging up your news feed, can they? It’s not like Facebook limits the number of friends you can have or charges a fee per friend.

An old friend deleted me for years ago for no apparent reason. I can’t say it affected my life in any real way - but, when she turned out to be the surprise guest at a uni reunion a few years later, I had to sit through a performance of ‘OMG, Cough! It’s been years! Where are you living, what do you do, who are you shagging?’ etc. - all the while knowing she didn’t give a shit. To avoid upsetting the organiser, I in turn had to enthusiastically ask about this woman’s life, her kids etc., when frankly I knew very well she didn’t even care enough about me to scroll past the odd update.

I find it ironic how many of them people telling the OP and her husband to grow up and that social media doesn’t matter are the same people who regularly go through their friend lists to ‘cull’ people. If it’s not that important, why are you making a point of doing it?

How did he know? Does he keep track of his fb friends very carefully? Or did he try and message her and realise?

I don’t think I’d notice 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’ve just deleted a load of people from Facebook as I’m only using it now for work purposes (don’t ask, stupid work system otherwise I’d just delete my account). It doesn’t mean I’m not friends with people or dislike them.

How do you know if you have been deleted?

I delete people who don’t react with me, although I had one this week ask why I’d deleted them!!

I do feel a bit sad if someone deletes me if they are why I’d consider a close friend, but I’m a cow and send them another friends request!!!

I would delete someone on FB if all I saw of them on there was sweary football posts, wouldn't want to see any of that on my timeline.

Christ, over thinking, much?!!

It's Facebook, FFS! Taking SM to this level is just ridiculous & in honesty if your DH is effing & jeffing all over the place I can see why some people would remove him.

I love a good swear & a political post and have been removed by some Tory lovers & people I haven't seen for 20 years I knew from church as a kid - BIG LOSS! In the same way, I've deleted some people who've shown racist/right-wing nut job tendencies. Why wouldn't I?

If you're that worried, speak to her and ask why DH was singled out (you know, like adults would). It's really not that serious!!

Both you & DH are massively over-reacting here, I think.