real fake friends

This may be a touchy subject, but what the hell. It's 1:50am and I have a 8:15 class tomorrow (my last class here in business school!). But anyway... I was thinking about something that happened today that I'm a bit irked about.

Now how can I do this without being anything remotely specific but still get the point across...

OK... so maybe I should start by saying what I mean by a fake friend. A fake friend is (in this case at least) someone who asks to be your friend on facebook, but they aren't really your friend. In fact, not even someone you would consider an acquaintance. I may know who you are, but I have no real expectation of talking to you, hanging out with you, or doing anything with you. BUT, for the sake of social "norms" and to avoid offending people who actually do consider me a friend/acquaintance, I accept.

So what's a real fake friend? I'm a believer (not to be confused with evangelist) of the theory that if you act in accordance to certain expectations, it'll become a reality. At work it would be how filling in bigger roles can lead to a promotion. In this case it would be if you act as if you're good friends with someone, it can actually facilitate the "friend-making" process. A real fake friend is someone who hasn't really made it to the friend level yet, but has this mentality. So when duty calls, they fill the role accordingly.

Tonight I had my first interaction EVER with one of these fake friends. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed. Rather than casual friendliness to be expected of people (ANYONE... not just friends or fake friends), what I got was a bit of hostility and belligerence. Fake friend in this case seemed more like an aspirational enemy. What the hell?

Periodically I go through and purge my fake friends. Tonight I made a special occasion to delete this false link. No hard feelings, fake buddy. I'm just following the social norm called reciprocity.

Also, I'm not sure how well connected this person is, but it's generally not a good idea to randomly create conflict with people. Now, I'm not going to go around slandering your name in public because of this. I'm not really into that. But, don't expect me to forget this if you decide to ask me for favors down the road either.

Perhaps if I feel nice in the morning I'll forward this post to the person I'm talking about.