You got to have friends ...

So sang Bette Midler, before the birth of Facebook.

Bette's looking for the kind of friends who support you when you need them most, not the ones who abandon you when you need them most. People whom you support, and who support you. Real friends.

Facebook friends, OTOH, may be those important people in your life, but just as likely are casual acquaintances from the past (high school or college classmates) or present (community-, hobby-, volunteer-, work-related), with whom you have a superficial relationship. They friend you on Facebook, you accept because why not what does it matter. Good to have lots of FB friends, the more the better.

And then you begin to know them better by reading their FB posts, and you find out that they have heinous ideas about hot-button issues re politics and immigration and entitlements and health care and gay rights and tax reform and all sorts of things (this goes both ways) that you support and would defend to the death. And further that they spend time on such mindless activities as Farmville and Mafia Wars.

What to do?

--Engage in a flame war in the comments section of a post and hear from them and their equally clueless FB friends (not yours ... or maybe yours) about how you are a loser and they are masters of the mean-spirited universe
--Go to your Friends list and delete them

(Let's assume you have better places to sell your stuff.) What is the purpose of patronizing Facebook, if not as a place to connect to people who mean something to you? Why grind your teeth and wonder whether to post a response or to let  crap go unanswered? Why waste time on assholes you've lost touch with  and now you know there *is* no accident in the universe and there *is* a reason they're out of your life? Why waste time on casual acquaintances who turn out to be assholes after you scratch the surface?

Kurt Vonnegut (I heart KV) wrote about the concept of granfalloon in "Cat's Cradle." A granfalloon is a group of people who have a superficial shared identity, but whose association is meaningless. Does this sound like Facebook?

Man up. Push the "X" to delete.