The reign of social media lives on as the New Oxford dictionary (“The world’s most trusted dictionary) named ‘unfriend’ the word of the year. Yes, as in: “Some whack-job keeps invited me to play Farmville so I unfriended his lame ass.” Another point for Facebook, and another hit to society’s overall intelligence. To ‘unfriend’ someone may be the ultimate diss on the interwebs, but in reality, Oxford is just verbing a noun.

To make matters worse, other finalists for the word of the year included: sexting, intexticated, tramp stamp and deleb. For those not as in the loop as the New Oxford word of the year panel, deleb is defined as a dead celebrity. I, for one, have never heard the word ‘deleb’ used in everyday conversation, but what do I know? I’m still over here thinking the correct term was to ‘defriend.’ Embarrassing.

While these words are culturally clever and all, I can guarantee word-enthusiasts all over the world are groaning right now. I’m just wondering how long it takes before ‘WTF,’ ‘LOL’ and ‘UR2GR82B4GOT10’ get their moment of glory. Also wondering how long it will take my spell check to realize ‘unfriend’ is legit now. Seriously, what is this proto-language and where do we come up with it?

It’s about that time for me.

I am going to have a sit down with my Facebook friends list and carefully consider who belongs there, who does not, and which family members need to be moved to the “Limited Profile” list. Yes, de-friending is a vicious process, but it has to be done in order to make way for new and more important friendships. Read: the people with the most exciting photos to stalk.

Anyway, as I sit here cutting out some of my 423 friends, these are a few of the people whom I’ve made dust in my virtual wind.

The Friend Who Desperately Wants You To Join YoVille
Facebook applications can be great. Who doesn’t enjoy a game of Scrabulous? But being bombarded with requests to join your farm or garden or pirate ship isn’t helping out your chances of remaining friends with me come clean-up time. Bye-bye application-addict. We’re ignoring you once and for all.

The Constant Status-Updater
I do not care what your plans for the day are.  Or what emo song lyics are accurately emoting your feelings at the moment. Or what color your poop is… no matter how odd it may be. If you are cluttering up my newsfeed with mindless chatter, you will surely be de-friended. But before we part ways, I want you to seriously consider getting a Twitter. There, and only there, will you be appreciated. Read More »