I have as a result of recent disappointments started deleting people from my social media today. I did this quietly, as in I didn't reach out to any of them to try to repair or salvage friendships as I usually would. I did this for all but one person... I was curious, so I conducted a social experiment. Before I get to explaining what that was, here is the backstory...
This woman, who for the sake of this blog I'll call Kay, added me to Facebook several months ago. I came across Kay on Tinder (which I've since deleted - fuck that bullshit), and realized that we had met about 15 years ago at a bar in Barrie where we both lived before moving to Toronto. I noticed that we had many mutual friends so I bypassed Tinder and messaged her on Facebook, awkwardly, but politely. The result of that conversation was her adding me, saying that she remembered me, that the message put a huge smile on her face, and that she would love to grab a drink and challenge me to some board games. Seems great, right? As it turned out, Kay was very busy, as a lot of people are these days, so I didn't expect that we would get together any time soon. For several months I would periodically drop her a line and ask if she was free, to which she always had something pop up. She did say she wanted to, so I believed her. Then I started to notice in my newsfeed that she would keep posting status updates about wanting someone to take her out for drinks somewhere cool. I would comment on these posts, and she would "like" my comments, but then not respond to a polite and direct message about being free for a drink. It just so happens that I also very recently came across her profile on a dating site (OKCupid - which I should delete, because it's just more fucking bullshit) on which she advertises herself as wanting to meet fun people for drinks and flirtation. I even messaged her there saying "So, board game challenge and drinks, do you accept?" to which there was no response.
On to the social experiment... I was deleting her already, but I decided that I would send her a message at the same time anyway. In her dating profile, she sold herself as someone who was genuine and honest, and in no way fake. The message I sent her was along the lines of "Hello Kay, I'm not sure I know what I did that has resulted in you not responding to me, but if you didn't want to get that drink any longer, the genuine thing to do would have been to just tell me straight up." and she became LIVID, going on a tirade about how busy she is and never has time to do anything (meanwhile her status updates seem to have her out about 3 nights a week at different bars around the city), and didn't appreciate being accused of being fake. She accused me of being a stalker for noticing her status updates, to which I pointed out that I deleted her and was in no way a stalker, to which she attacked my character saying "goes to show what kind of person you are that you'd delete me instead of remaining friends"... Really? I mean, we were ever friends? Maybe she wasn't intentionally misleading me, or enjoying the attention of someone periodically asking her out that she could put off because she was way too "busy with work" but going out on dates. She immediately went on to contradict herself saying "I've been putting my energy into someone I've been seeing, and dating other people wouldn't feel right," following it up with "I'm single and I want to connect with different people, and I am in no way going to be apologetic for that"... Yet, she attacked my character? Would she have wanted to be friends with me after all of that anyway? Not fucking likely. Was I an asshole for deleting her and simultaneously sending that message? Sure, a little bit, I didn't actually care either way, and would have been open to talking about it maturely had she said "You know what, I was being misleading, it was a dick move" (which didn't happen, clearly), but I was mostly curious what would happen, and in a "no fucks given" mood, and discovered what I had expected anyway, which I pointed out in the last thing I said to her, which was this... It's funny to me, that for all of the times I respectfully and politely checked in with her to do something she said she wanted to do, reconnect with me and have my company, which she was too busy to even respond with a few simple words, that the only way I actually got her attention (and boy did I ever get her attention, she typed a fuck-load) was by being a bit of an asshole. I don't need people in my life who will only pay attention to me if I'm an asshole, nor do I desire to be in the lives of people who are that toxic. Or, maybe I'm just an asshole...
you're an asshole for not giving her 1000% more attention and doubly harassing her to go out for that drink!! actually no, you're an asshole for conducting an experiment where you knew what the outcome would be! Actually, no - you're an asshole for having such faith in humanity. You know how it goes nowadays, being an asshole creates buzz; people are attracted to "buzz", of course - measured nominally by thumbs up, tweet ups, watever-the-fucks .. so you're an asshole for not being enough of an asshole to garner this putrid asshole's attention to grab a drink, so that you together you can remove inhibition and "be a couple of assholes" and MAYBE, just maybe, you could have had a genuine relationship. People are garbage. I'd rather finish last if it meant being honest and genuine.
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