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Top Reason for Facebook Unfriending Is Too Many Useless Posts
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.
'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."
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!
which is totally what she said
...a constant barrage of FarmVille/Mafia Wars posts then yes, that's why I unfriend/hide people. I don't care if you need eighteen Mystic Geegaws to complete your Undersea Mirth Palace, people.
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?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Someone spent the time to determine that if you are a polarizing inappropriate racist you won't have many friends?
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.
Maybe Facebook should implement a "dislike" button... that might give those who feel that updating their status about their bowel functions every couple hours a day is really not that interesting and that yes, your actually losing friends over it.
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 tenuously via facebook. For me, that's the foot in the door that keeps me checking it daily, if only for lack of something better to do.
Thanks for the wake-up call. I'm going to the library.
...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?!?
what exactly are the middle ground topics that keep 500M people addicted to FB?
Who's sleeping with whom.
You can't take the sky from me...
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.
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If you end every friendship with everyone who has some nutty or controversial ideas, you're either going to end up very lonely or in an echo chamber where all of your friends just agree with you constantly.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
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.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Favourite bands have got nothing on babies. Each time another girl I went to school with has a baby, another unending stream of crap photos and posts begins, and I mark the to not show in my newsfeed. If I had a child and turned into a photo posting retard, I'd at least have the decency to make a facebook account for the child and post the shit there; at least then only people who opted in would receive the barrage of spam about the midget
Sorry but if you (not you "you" but the generic "you") seriously believe that Obama was born in Africa then trying to reason with you is like trying to reason with the crazy cat lady pushing her shopping cart. You can't reason with crazy.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
... 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.
I mean what else is there on Facebook?
I want to unfriend my Mom for the 3-5 biblical quotations a day. Posting anonymously just in case...
-Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle, 1863
Replace "newspaper" with "blog" and "post-office" with "facebook" and it applies perfectly today.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If you could reason with crazy people, there would be no crazy people.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
minor "offenses". Like disliking having a mosque near Ground Zero
Religious bigotry is no minor offense.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!