Friends

So my friend Dijea over at Me, Myself & I has thrown the gauntlet for us to try to post on our blogs at least once a week. I'm game for that.

Which has made my mind turn to thinking about friends, specifically online friends. I've probably posted about this before, but my memory is so bad that obviously I'm ready to do it again. Dijea and I knew each other well enough back when I lived in Dallas, but we didn't seem (in my mind) to really become friends until I moved away and we connected via Facebook. I feel like if we lived in the same town we would definitely be getting together for some girls' nights out. And there are a few other people who I now feel this way about, that I really didn't know well before Facebook but now realize they are someone who shouldn't have fallen off the radar after high school/college/whatever as quickly as they did (or should have been more on my radar than they originally were).

But I also think about a quote regarding FB that I once read that said it was not good for us because it's like reliving high school all over again. Relationships that were supposed to die a natural death - acquaintances, ex-boyfriends, etc. - no longer do. And in a way I can see this. I have 500+ "friends" on Facebook, but I can honestly tell you that many of these people are not actually friends of mine. They were people I knew at one time - I'm not one for friending strangers online - but I don't really care much about what is going on in their lives. And I've heard the statistic that we can only truly have meaningful relationships with about 150 people at any given time. But I just can't seem to bring myself to drop people from my friend list - not that I want to keep the number big but because I just feel BAD about doing it.

Plus some of those "acquaintances" are the ones that have turned into really interesting people for me. And I actually like (most) of my ex-boyfriends and am interested in hearing how they are doing. And it's exciting to connect with someone that you haven't heard from in 20+ years.

So what to do? Is it really that bad to have that many "friends"? Most of the ones I don't care about I have blocked, so I'm not really seeing their posts anyway. But I probably could go through and get rid of a handful right away - people I get requests from that were a year or two older or younger than me in high school. I sit on those request sometimes trying to decide whether to friend or not, then end up doing it when I am having a "why not?" day. But maybe this will be the day I answer "Because I really don't remember you at all, not even 25+ years ago when we were in school together."

I don't think I can get down to 150, but I bet I can get rid of at least a few of them. Will it be liberating or guilt-inducing?