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Story is now live. Read it now: Unfriending: To purge or not to purge? Ten viewpoints
Creative Commons photo attribution to Gina Trapani.
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No! I do not regret unfriending people. My spell check doesn't even like me to use the word 'unfriending'. The reason I do it is because I am a professional magician and I am the brand. So, I am careful to keep everything I post and everything that is posted on my facebook 'positive'. When someone writes something (even out of jest) that could lose me business, I unfriend and block them. I block them to avoid public discussions about why I don't want 'negative' ideas associated with my brand. As I write this, I don't even like have the 'n' word in my previous sentence near my brand because some google search somewhere sometime will group them together…
I don't unfriend unless I want to completely purge the person from my life — and I have never regretted doing so. In fact, I find it helpful when getting over a toxic relationship to have no reminders — or as few as possible — of the person's existence. For less egregious behavior, I just hide their posts on Facebook, but keep them as “friends” — just people whose activity, or postings, I find boring or annoying, but whom I don't actively unfriend.
I purge about once a year. Mostly I dump people that I don't recall who they are or why we friended in the first place.
But always check their profile before you unfriend them. You never know, they may be a valuable contact one day.
It as hard to come by experienced people for this subject, but you sound like you know what you are talking about! Thanks
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