I Don't Think that Utility Means What You Think It Means

[bcholmes]

So I went to LiveJournal today, and noticed that someone removed me from their friends list. Always curious about such things, I scanned through the remaining list and figured out that it was someone that I'll call R. (even though his real name is Jason, and his LiveJournal id is the_other_j.

R. happens to be someone that I work with. So when we happened to be in the same room, I asked, "So what are you trying to communicate by removing me from your friends list?"

R. looked flustered and finally said, "You were never intended to be added permanently. While you were off work, I got so many people asking me how you were recovering, I added you to find out how you were doing."

Uh. What? That doesn't make any sense. Okay, I can buy an argument that maybe he wanted to check up on me without ever leaving his friends page, but that seems like an odd process.

Personally, I think he deleted me 'cause I called him passive/aggressive the other day. R. has more odd social rules than any twelve people I know.

Oh, well. I'll just mock him.

Comments

adding people to "friends" list

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

hm. i actually do think that utility does what he thinks it does (though, not knowing him, maybe he really did get peeved that you called him passive-aggressive).

i am about to do the very same thing. so far i've been reading people's journal entries via firecat's friends page because she had everyone from alt.poly collected. but she's also got a lot of stuff on there that i've since determined i can live without seeing every day, and now i am gonna build my own "friends" page with everyone i am even vaguely interested in on it, plus some people i don't know but whose journals crack me up or make me think.

i dislike the naming of that list. hardly anyone on there is gonna be my "friend" in the true meaning of the word, though i feel friendly towards them. i certainly don't feel any of the communities on it are my "friends", *snicker*. i do wish they would rename the darn thing; seems that a lot of LJ angst stems from it being used in such different ways by different people.

it's ticklish enough for me to be writing a paragraph about it on my userinfo page. *gack*.

(note: i do not make "friends-only" entries at all, so i definitely don't use that list to separate trusted people from the hoi polloi.)