Occasionally, I do a Facebook spring clean, i.e. I delete people off my ‘Friends’ list. I see it as a form of decluttering, a bit like email Inbox spring cleaning. As with all forms of decluttering, it somehow makes me feel better even if such an act may seem anti-social to some people. So how then do I decide who to delete? Here are my three criteria:  

1. People I have met only once and will probably not meet ever again.

2. People whose (frequent) Facebook updates are annoyingly narcissitic, self-absorbed, inane or presents too much information that is necessary. E.g. Waiting for bus. [So? Who the hell cares?] / Looking for a new house but this condominium has a cheesy name. Should I consider it or not??? [I mean, seriously, stop flaunting your wealth already. Most people in Singapore can only afford HDB government flats, OK?] / Don’t ask me, but I just woke up from the worst nightmare ever!!! [OK, if you don’t want people to ask, then don’t post such a status update! Attention seeker.] 

3. People who don’t take an interest in my life and vice versa, even if I knew them from ages ago. But you know, sometimes people drop out of your life, as you from theirs, and there is no point in keeping that tenuous bit of meaningless connection. 

I try to keep the number of friends to a maximum of 300. As a personal rule, I don’t add current colleagues as friends. I hardly ever post status updates except for hiking and travel photos, and the occasional food pic. I use Facebook more to organise events and write occasionally to friends (private messages of course and not posting on their walls for everyone to see). Other times, I’m mostly the voyeur who browses my Facebook newsfeed to see what my friends are up to.

I spring-cleaned my Facebook ‘Friends’ list a week ago and at last count I had 278 friends. I guess that’s a pretty OK number…neither the social butterfly nor the social hermit. I think I can deal with that.