the lmh defriending method

It seems laughable now, but when Facebook first became a "thing" I wasn't going to join.  Quick cut to the end of the first week of college, and I'd already given in and joined.  Don't judge! -- I've never claimed to be a non-conformist.  So there I was on The 'Book, looking up my high school and adding every person I'd ever talked to or had a class with in high school, and rapidly adding my new college friends.  And random people I meet at bars.  And classmates that I need to work on group projects with.  And random people I meet on trains in Chicago on St. Patrick's Day.    And friend's significant others.  And the lifeguard at the Vegas pool. I've been doing a lot of friending since August 1, 2005  (Fun fact: timeline can tell you when you joined!), but --with the exception of ex-boyfriends--not a lot of defriending.  

It never really bothered me to have absurd amounts of "friends" on Facebook, because it's occasionally fun to look up random people from high school and see how they're doing.  The thing is, I never stopped to think that people might be doing that to me.  And then recently, I got a notification that I had been "poked."  Shocked and confused  that someone was poking me in 2012, I was also a little weirded out when I saw it was from a creep-a-licious kid (now married) who I had never really spoken to, even when he was in my AP Calc class in high school.  I promptly defriended him, and got to thinking about who I should be allowing in my social network. 

I didn't come up with any hard and fast guidelines as to who should be included, but I determined that one should NOT be my friend if:

1. I hate his or her guts.
2. I can't figure out who the person is after looking through a couple of profile pictures.
3. I can't remember his or her real last name.
4. I haven't had any interaction--in person, or on the internet, however small it may be-- with the person that I can remember (I assume that my memory is good for 18-24 months).

I opened up my friend list and started to go at it, but it was a huge hassle, and I only made it halfway through the As.  And that's when I devised the perfect solution:  I defriend people on their birthdays. 

Every day, someone has a birthday, and I get a Birthday notification at the top of my homepage.  I click on it, wish my friends a happy birthday, and defriend anyone who falls into one of the 4 categories above.    It may seem harsh to pull the plug on someone's birthday, but I've been doing this for a couple months and no one's said anything yet.  I figure that even someone who checks every day to make sure their number of friends hasn't changed isn't going to do it on their birthday, when they're getting blown up with hundreds of wall posts.  And if they do happen to notice that someone went missing, it's their birthday and there are hundreds of more fun things to obsess over.  I figure that in a year's time, I'll have made it through my whole friend list, but without the hassle of doing it all in one day.  So there you have it --Easy, clean defriending without a huge time commitment.  

Want to avoid being defriended by me?  Like a status or two, message me, hang out with me, or exploit the loophole and have your birthday on Saturday or Sunday this year... I don't clean house on weekends!