Unfriend/Unfollow: Why You Should Delete (Almost) Everyone

Would you go out of your way to surround yourself with people who make you cringe in real life? So why do you do it online? You deserve better. Here are a few of probably dozens of reasons to clean up your list of social media "friends" in order to improve your pursuit of happiness.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

You may not know it, but there people in your life that bring you down. As soon as you see them, your inner jerk appears and you find yourself irritated and annoyed. The amount of energy you waste pondering people you barely know can be used for productive and practical things. Why do you keep them around? What is the purpose of your "relationship" with them? Would you go out of your way to surround yourself with people who make you cringe in real life? So why do you do it online? You deserve better. Here are a few of probably dozens of reasons to clean up your list of social media "friends" in order to improve your pursuit of happiness.

1. Her face is annoying. She posts too many photos of herself and while should continue to do whatever the fuck she wants, there's no way to get away from the fact that her face annoys the shit out of you. She's not posting five selfies a day with an absurd amount of hashtags for the sole purpose of making you cringe and feel sorry for the fact that she can't come up with anything better than this sad, sad form of self exploitation. She has no clever comments, no funny stories, no captivating photographs, ever. You might buy her a drink if you saw her at a bar and started chatting, but right now, you need to stop looking at these pictures of her annoying face.

2. You lost respect for him. Somewhere at some point, something he did made you stop taking him seriously as a person. It may be something that's not your business, and very likely, something that does not warrant a confrontation. If you're looking at his photos, his status updates, his profile, etc. and just picking out granules of evidence that affirm your loss of respect, how does that do you any good? Say goodbye by clicking "unfriend".

3. She's boring. And you don't understand what she thinks she'll accomplish by letting all 800 of her friends/followers know that she has a headache. Or that her back hurts. Or that she's picking up a pizza because she's starving. You went to school together, or maybe you met through a mutual friend, but you don't need to waste your reading comprehension skills on her captivating life perspective. Make room for someone who actually adds something to your life.

4. He is fascinating. Really. And that's why you have to delete him. You waste far too much time and brain space on what is going on in his life, even though you never ever speak. He is the reason you will never watch reality TV shows gain because the drama in his life is by far more interesting. You take screenshots of his posts and share them with friends so you can all share in feeling humiliated on his behalf. When he doesn't share some sort of ridiculousness on social media for a whole 4 hours or more, you start to secretly hope that he did not suddenly become normal. You enjoy following him for pointless, senseless amusement. And let's face it. That isn't why the two of you connected. He's not here for your mindless entertainment. Let him go.

5. She shares, in riveting detail, every personal problem she has with her children. And every personal problem that her children have. You get to watch a mini train wreck in slow social media motion. Some day, these little "terrors" who have deep psychological problems, or need specific medications and rituals that she spells out for all 1123 of her "friends" will be old enough to be pissed that their mom's entire social network knows all of their very private business. You are following these horror stories with the hopes to watch her kids grow old enough to create their own social media accounts and start posting private personal shit about her. This is not why she oozes with TMI about the humans under her care, now, is it? Break it off. Now.

6. He rants about politics everysingleday. And even when you agree with him, you don't need memes about which politician sucks and who is taking our country/state/town to hell in a hand basket every day. And you wonder what he thinks he's accomplishing, but you've already concluded that his existence probably accomplishes nothing. So stop subjecting yourself to the cyber-whining and delete him.

7. She can't go 24 hours without telling everyone how great her life is. If it's so great, why does she bother to interrupt the awesomeness constantly by sharing on social media. And adding filters to her photos of how great it is. Or making stupid photo collages to showcase her incredible life. Why isn't she swept away by all the awesome living she is doing? This person makes you a judgmental and skeptical asshole because whenever you see their updates, you conjure up theories in your head about why she feels the need to tell all these people who (mostly) don't give a shit that her existence is just too good to be true. She doesn't deserve this. And neither do you. Get rid of her.

8. He "likes" or "favorites" every single thing you share yet you've never actually met in real life. In a sense, this is flattering, but it's also a gigantic pink-elephant-like wth. There is no way that you are that fascinating. You don't want to assume he's creepy, but, you definitely think he's creepy. And you need to make more space in your train of thought so as not to waste in on pondering the fact that this guy is creepy.

You don't have to dump them all at once. Delete a few at a time, every few days. If you stop dwelling on people who make absolutely no difference in your life, you'll be surprised at how much better you feel. Be the change you want to see! After all, they probably won't even notice you are gone.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot