The Grades Are In!

[dawn_felagund]

Wot? Dawn making three posts in a week?? Yes indeedy, but don't get too excited; this was my whole week off between semesters so I have time for this. Online university is awesome in that you can sit on your duff in pink and yellow plaid PJs and leopard-print slippers while drinking wassail and "attending class" (not that I've ever done that *ahem*), but less awesome in that there are no holidays, no breaks; the professors might be nice enough to bump back assignment due dates for biggies like Christmas but not necessarily. (None of my undergrad professors did last year; most of my grad professors did this year. Weird.) So I'm living it up this week because, come Monday, it's back to breakneck pace.

Anyway, I got the last of my grades back today and *drumrrrrroll* I would make my namesake Hermione proud. I got a 100% in Educational Psychology. (Which I damn sight should have gotten since my BA is in psychology! Anything less would be an embarrassment.) I did a bit poorer in Intro to Curriculum and Instruction and Secondary Teaching Strategies: only a 99.8% in those classes. I must work harder next semester.

The only thing irksome about this is that the only non-A grade I've gotten at my current university was an A- in ... the Tolkien class I took last fall. I'm still pissed about that because it had nothing to do with what I knew or how much effort I put in (quite a bit on the former and scads on the latter) but with tricksey gotcha! grading. The professor himself said of my writing, "This is graduate-level work!" (It was an undergraduate class.) And then gave me an A- based on a true-false exam where several of his own questions he answered incorrectly. Fark.

I don't usually pay much mind to LJ's Writer's Block since it is little more than an excuse to push more ads on those of us who have Basic accounts, but today's was actually pretty decent, so what the hell. I am living it up this week and haven't done an m-word in hella days.

Has anyone ever unfriended you without explanation? Did you ask why? Have you ever deleted someone from your friend list without saying why?

Why, yes, I have been unfriended (to the best of my knowledge) three times, and in none of those cases has the person told me why. Most of the time I discover it by accident while trying to access a person's journal via my profile page and lo! they are not there anymore! So it's probably actually more than three since no one has ever unfriended me and actually told me why, so I'm sure I've lost "friends" over the years without realizing it.

(I am not counting drive-by friendings in which a person friends everyone who has posted in the last hour and then unfriends anyone who does not add him/her back. I never add back these people--why do I want to read the LJ of someone I don't know and with whom I have nothing in common?--so have been unfriended lots of times for this reason.)

I have only unfriended someone twice in my five years on LJ. Both times were because they unfriended me first, so I didn't feel I needed to offer an explanation. In the first case, I had nothing against the person who unfriended me and, perhaps for this reason, didn't care to make her life miserable from having me on her Friend Of list, since she was opposed to me. In the second case, I couldn't stand the person to start but had added her since I add any Tolkien fan who friends me first. So when she unfriended me it gave me the excuse I was looking for to kick her off my flist. *kick!* And she won't be back.

I've never gotten the whole "cleaning out my flist" thing that some people do. To each her own and all, but I don't really care to construct my flist based on who comments on my posts or posts regularly ... I don't do much of either anymore, so who am I to begrudge my LJ "friends" having a busy life of their own? I have varying degrees of filters for the very personal posts that I only want seen by people I know, so it's not an issue of privacy ... not that that's a great excuse either, since anything posted here is only a screencap or a database hiccup away from being public.

The psychologist in me loves to pondering friending behavior and norms. So what say you, flist? What's your take on friending behaviors?

Comments

[dreamflower]

I've never done a massive unfriending, though I often think I should--sometimes I even say I'm going to-- but then don't. I have a lot of people on my flist that I don't think even post anymore. But also, I have a lot of people on my flist that I didn't put there myself-- most of them became actual friends over time, but a lot of them did not. (I should explain this: my LJ was actually set up *for* me--in my presence, and with my permission--by marigoldg. When she did, she put a lot of people on my flist that she thought I'd like to be friends with, and for the most part she was right and the majority of them friended me back.) A couple of times I've cleared out friends' duplicate LJs, and danae_b went through a couple of times and cleaned out some people who'd deleted their LJ and had strikethroughs. (That was also with my permission.)

What I really need to do is unfriend a few people whom I friended because of some LOTR post they made, but now all their posts are on other topics, and they never use cuts. But I don't want them thinking it's anything personal, so I don't. I also need to massively trim my communities-- I only ever unfriended one community that had not deleted, and that was because it was so popular that I could not find any of my regular friends on my flist, so after a few days I regretfully deleted it.

I would never unfriend someone because I disagreed with them, or even if they'd made me upset for some reason. I might if they unfriended me-- but I never notice when people do that. If I did go through and unfriend people it would be because (a) they never post anything of interest to me and never comment on my own posts, so we don't really know each other or (b) because they post *too much* and I simply can't handle them taking over my friends page. I do wish some people would learn to use cuts. *sigh*

[dawn_felagund]

I must confess that I have created a custom f-list so that I can read the posts of people I'm actually friends with. I have 142 people on my f-list right now, many of whom I suspect friended me because they wanted to follow my writing and whom I friended back because ... well, I friend back anyone who shares an interest in Tolkien or writing. :) But some of their posts are for fandoms I don't belong to or in languages I can't read, so I filter them and most of the really active comms I belong to for those times when I want to catch up with people I know but don't have time to go sifting. That saves me from having to trim my f-list. :) Or develop a more restrictive policy for granting access to my f-locked posts, which I also don't want to do.

[amaranth-5.livejournal.com]

First off, congrats n the grades! Granted, I'm not surprised. They are well deserved.

On the other issue, well, hmmm. That's a can of worms I'm not sure I want to deal with today with everything else going on here. Maybe I'm a chicken, but I actually find it a huge headache trying to keep track of the various friending and defriending protocools because everyone seems to have a different idea of how it should work. It's not something I can give a blanket answer to, and not every friending and defriending answer is the same. I'm a bleeding heart, and I never want to hurt anyone's feelings. But in certain situations one has to look at the situation indiviuall and weigh the pros ad cons. Of course having an overprotective husband doesn't always make things easier either! For me personally, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but because of my health issues and everything going on in my RL, I admit I am a lot more careful. That's why I have a fandom LJ and a personal LJ. But even when one tris to be careful, feelings still unintentionally get hurt. It sucks, but I guess it's part of life. It's just too complicated and I think that's why social websites cn be prone to big drama, because "everyone" has a different idea about the defriending and friending issue alone. Some feel that you should frend everyone and let everyone see everything on your LJ. others are highly selective and have a million filters.

I personly am not a fan of a ton of filters. I used to think it was a good idea, but it can get messy really easily. So hence why I have a fandom LJ and a personal one. Fandom one I add prtty much anyone ho asks, the personal one I'm very selective of. And it's not to be clique-y or make ayone feel excluded. But I just like to be able to talk with my close friends about personal stuff, especially egarding my health, that I would rather not share wih the public and I'm a lot stricter with the persnal LJ than the fandom one.

But, omg, sometmes I feel like I need a psyhic, or a special degree, or something to try and figure out all the various friending an defriending measures, and who is ging to be ma at m if I'm not LJ friends with this person, or who will be mad if I am, ect. It's jut a real huge headache to try and think about, so I try not to. Maybe that makes me insensitive and selfish, but seriously, one could make themseves batty tyin to figure it all out. I just try to do what I feel is right for me, and hope it's the right thing. But I do find seperating my personal stuff from my fandom LJ to be very helpful.

[dawn_felagund]

I agree that everyone seems to have a different idea about "correct" friending behavior. Some of it is so ridiculous that I have to laugh, like the people who scream, "IF YOU FRIEND ME WITHOUT ASKING OR TELLING ME WHO YOU ARE THEN I WILL BLOCK YOU!!!" ... like being added as someone's friend grants any more access than if that person followed via RSS feed or just clicking on the person's username every day. Or the ones who unfriend everyone who does not comment on a particular post. Good riddance, I say! :)

I've not seen too much drama in this fandom concerning friending ... at least, among the people with whom I keep company. Everyone has different ideas about what's good and poor etiquette but also tends to understand that those ideas aren't universal. The most drama I've seen has been among the friends of RL friends who friend me on LJ and who, not to sound pompous, truly don't seem to understand how LJ works. And I know there are corners in this fandom where de-friending (or the threat thereof) is used to punish poor behavior; after all, I was de-friended by a few people when I spoke out about the homophobic undertones of certain "anti-slash" arguments.

Good riddance, I say. ;)

I have a few levels of filters for controlling both who can access my content and for filtering my f-list so that I can see the posts of those people I'm actually friends with. I don't use filters on my posts very often ... maybe once per year when I'm making a personal post that I'd rather not be visible to those with whom I've exchanged nary a word. I am always very nervous using filters, I must admit, especially if I am complaining about something that will piss off the f-list members who are excluded. So I generally don't use filters but do have a handful set up for those once-per-year occasions. :)

[kenazfiction.livejournal.com]

I've definitely been defriended. I assume it's not personal, but what do I know? I don't post very often (maybe that's the problem!) and it's very rarely of a personal nature (or maybe *that's* the problem!). But it always does make me wonder what I did (or didn't do) to drive them away.

But I've also defriended people-- almost always because our interests or fandoms have diverged, and the reason we friended each other in the first place is no longer relevant. A couple of times it's been because someone got involved in wank and their entries became a series of rants, and the bad mojo just wore me out. Annnnnd I let go of one person because she was both young and a bit emotionally immature, and after a number of really emo posts about the sort of things young, immature people get emo about (OMG, my parents like totally suck! They don't understaaaaaaaaand how hard my life is!) and I finally realized that I was in a very different place in my life and wasn't interested in having to do a lot of virtual hand-holding and head-patting of someone who I didn't really know, and had originally only friended because we had fandom interests in common.

I've never given answers, I've just dropped away. I feel like people should be able to do whatever they want in their journals-- wank, emote, proselytize, create-- and I have no business telling them that I don't like what they're doing in their own personal space. I just choose not to be an audience to them any longer. I feel like telling someone "I'm unfriending you and here's why..." just creates drama where I see only a simple read/don't read equation.

So, really, there have only been a couple of times I've defriended for "personal" reasons... the rest, it's strictly been a matter of just not having much in common after a while. But that doesn't, of course, stop me from wondering why people have defriended me.

[dawn_felagund]

I feel like people should be able to do whatever they want in their journals-- wank, emote, proselytize, create-- and I have no business telling them that I don't like what they're doing in their own personal space.

I couldn't have said it better! :) The few times I've gotten really annoyed at comments people have left on my LJ have been when they are of the whiny nature of, "I can't believe you posted this you offended me." Sorry Charlie, it's my journal and I make no claims of fairness or even coherence! If I can't prattle away off the top of my head here then where can I?

Interesting point on how explaining why a person was un-friended can be interpreted as inspiring drama and wank. I hadn't thought of it that way, but I agree with you. By announcing it, it's almost like punishing the person for whatever they did and discouraging that behavior in the future. And I agree that that's not the point.

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

I've never defriended anybody unless they defriended me first. It's never bothered me if anyone defriended me. If I didn't know the reason, then they probably weren't important to me. If I did know the reason, then it was probably good riddance. So, I have never informed anyone I was defriending them and probably would not.

I do a rare filter if I need to blow off a little steam, reveal unfinished, unflattering-to-me rough work, or something I want to protect for future publication reasons. I often f-lock personal entries, but don't filter those much because I have a very underdeveloped sense of privacy. It's not entirely a joke that I only f-lock to keep my family out of LJ moaning about them.

[dawn_felagund]

That worked for me till many of my family joined LJ! ;)

I'm never bothered at being un-friended either. I'd much prefer someone simply dropping away to having to listen to their whining about how they hate what I post every time I post. That's never happened ... but I have had people complain that I've offended them while ranting or whatnot. I'm glad their journals are so squeaky-clean PC but mine is not! If they're that bothered by it, de-friending may indeed be in order. :)

Incidentally, I don't think I've ever be de-friended for anything that I actually did on LJ. Hmm.

[pandemonium-213.livejournal.com]

Ninety-nine point eight in two classes? Appalling, Felagund. Simply appalling. The grading system in the Tolkien class sounds like a moving target.

On the defriending issue. Heh. Yes. Two individuals have done this to me. Each one initially friended me, interestingly enough. One is prone to "clearing out (her) f-list" so it wasn't unexpected, and frankly, I found it rather curious that she was even remotely interested in me in the first place.

The other was both stealthy and ironic. Ironic in that a few weeks before I discovered that this individual had dropped me, said individual made quite a production of announcing that she was defriending someone on her f-list and that she had never dropped anyone before. Apparently she was compelled to do so as a result of whatever brouhaha had ensued with the other player. Stealthy in that I discovered I was dropped from her f-list some time later but with no such grand fanfare nor any explanation as to why. I'm more than a little contemptuous of such intellectual dishonesty.

So those were the only two folks I have defriended, but they made the first moves on all counts.

The only reason I don't make my entire LJ public is that I have not wanted my disparate worlds to collide. So really, I'm easy. I'll let just about anyone in and keep them on my LJ-droog list.

[dawn_felagund]

I know, I know. I aim to do better this semester. ;)

The grading system in the Tolkien class sounds like a moving target.

That's putting it nicely. Grades were based on two essays, two exams, and a nebulous "participation" score. Fair enough, although that did not make for a lot of coursework for an online course ... and that the two "exams" each consisted of 15 true-or-false questions that were open-ended, i.e. (kid you not) "True or False--Gandalf is to Beowulf as Frodo is to Odysseus." Of course, I got some of them wrong, and when I defended my answers to the professor, he admitted that I was right but that it was too much work for him to have to grade short-answer responses to the same questions! He then assured me that the exams would not hurt my grade, so to say that I was pissed at seeing an A- on my transcript after all of that is an understatement.

I remember your de-friending drama. :) I'm in agreement with Kenaz in the comment above that there is nothing wrong with de-friending because one's interests don't mesh or whatnot ... although I prefer to filter my f-list to accomplish the same purpose. But de-friending as punishment, to me, is bothersome, and announcing it seems guaranteed to create that impression.

[pandemonium-213.livejournal.com]

I remember your de-friending drama. :) I'm in agreement with Kenaz in the comment above that there is nothing wrong with de-friending because one's interests don't mesh or whatnot ... although I prefer to filter my f-list to accomplish the same purpose. But de-friending as punishment, to me, is bothersome, and announcing it seems guaranteed to create that impression.

Er, well, I am supping on crow at the moment, having engaged in first-strike defriending recently, but these were cases of "active neglect" (as in an almost deliberate lack of interest in/acknowledgment of the all-important person that is Me ;^)) as well some that were benign neglect (not a word for over a year).

and that the two "exams" each consisted of 15 true-or-false questions that were open-ended, i.e. (kid you not) "True or False--Gandalf is to Beowulf as Frodo is to Odysseus."

*Snaps neck with a double-take* What!?

[dawn_felagund]

ithilwen commented once that much of the "friending" woes on LJ would be resolved if LJ would change the word "friend" to "subscriber." I agree with that! :)

Sorry for the whiplash! Yes indeedy, 45% of our grade in this course was determined by 30 open-ended true-or-false questions. 30 T/F questions = two essays ... the mind boggles. It was one of the worst courses I've ever had, both at APU and UMBC (the latter not known for stellar pedagogy either), not only because of the wonky and lazy assessment strategy used by the professor but because he treated Sword of Shannara as an important book and believed that the LotR-as-a-religious-allegory muck held water. I should have listened to Oshun--she told me not to take the course and that I would hate it! :D

[pandemonium-213.livejournal.com]

Ithilwen's suggestion is a brilliant one. "Subscriber" is a much more precise definition for the purpose.

he treated Sword of Shannara as an important book and believed that the LotR-as-a-religious-allegory muck held water.

I'm not sure which of these appalls me more!

[trekqueen.livejournal.com]

YAY on the grades! No thanks really to the groupies. meh! Good thing to be proud of in your case. :)

Same as oshun above, I don't bump anyone unless I've been bumped first. Considering I have my LJ under friendslock, I don't like having that "open portal" that such and such person can still come over because I have the link open as a friend still on my side, especially if their reasons unbeknownst to me were of a nasty sort or anger in order to drop me.

I like having filters because I do have two people who are minors so I keep them out of my adult talk but most of the entries I post are under the basic Friends filter for anyone I have on my list. I have my slashy stuff under the filter for the friends I know who like that stuff and remove those who don't approve/like it.

Maybe..... two or three times there have been misunderstandings with oopsies not meaning to drop the friending. I'd much prefer people be up-front about it but I don't lose sleep over people not wanting to tell the truth to my face (or internet face I suppose haha).

[dawn_felagund]

Thank you! :D No, indeed, my grades were not due to my groupmates, but I have two consolations, one small and one a biggie:

1. to the best of my knowledge they never fixed the incorrect bits in the paper whereas I did and didn't share ... bad Dawn, and

2. no groupwork this semester!!! :D

I definitely think friending is a different can of worms when your journal is locked to start. Mine is mostly public, so keeping people on who have dumped me doesn't really bother me that much. I don't have the time or the energy, much of the time, to weed them out.

[independence1776]

First, congrats on your grades!

I tend to be more particular about adding people, but I don't really have a set policy. If someone asks, I'll likely add them, but I don't automatically friend back. I don't use filters, and I do post RL stuff-- which is why I'm particular about adding. I also have a hard time just adding people without asking them, and it's hard for me to ask, so it's somewhat of a catch-22 there.

As for unfriending, it was one person, I did it first, and she won't be back. It was mostly due to my looking for an excuse and partly due to the way she announced the creation of her personal LJ. I gave no explanation, because it's my LJ and because I didn't want to call her out on her less-than-polite behavior because it could easily have descended into drama/wank. (Maybe that makes me a coward, but so be it.)

Differing opinions or fandoms are not an issue. Life would be boring if we were all the same. Honestly, it would be hypocritical if I unfriended based on fandom involvement, because BBC's Merlin ate my brain back in August/September, and I'm just now switching back to the Silm.

[dawn_felagund]

I also tend not to add people but, rather, to wait for them to add me first. Which has me wondering now whether I added you or you added me! :D

If I do a deep psychological analysis of myself (ha ... not really), I suspect that's because I was unliked by most of my peers early in my life and don't like the thought of rejection even now. One of the few people I did friend first was someone I admired and told that I was friending ... and she didn't friend me back. Since this was in my early days in this fandom, I think it may have spoiled me a bit for taking that "risk" ever after! :)

I don't think that un-friending without explanation is cowardly. Kenaz gives a good rationale above as to how it could create less drama than "being honest" ... or at least forthcoming, which certainly seems the case with what you're saying.

I agree on un-friending because someone has different interests or picks up a different fandom. I'm a one-fandom gal but my scrolling finger is strong and, at the very worst, if I have nothing in common with a person for a spell, they end up off of the filter I've created for the journals I most like to follow. (Not like I follow anything these days, but someday ...) Un-friending because of divergent interests seems a little like using a Claymore to kill a fly but that's entirely personal opinion, of course.

Also ... I noticed you have a nifty "heretic" icon on your LJ and, as the Original Heretic™ am now miffed that I don't have one! :D

[independence1776]

I think I friended you first-- I was less shy when I created this LJ. What a difference a year makes…

Ditto. Moving every two years is not conducive to forming lasting friendships. (Plus, there was one girl in third grade who was perfectly friendly outside of school, but wouldn't talk to my sister and I in school.)

I think Kenaz is right about that. Things like that could so easily turn into wank it isn't funny. (Especially when the one who defriended is not well known, and the other person is.)

I'm a one-fandom-at-a-time woman, but I'm seriously going to make an effort to be bifandom now, because I love both Tolkien and Merlin too much. (And I missed Tolkien these past few months.) Yup-- I may not be involved in every fandom, etc. people on my flist are interested in, but it's interesting to read them talking about it.

Feel free to take it with credit! :D I made it after a discussion Steel, Pandë, and I had on evolution in Tolkien on Pandë's LJ quite a few months ago. (I've been trying to fit it in since the first time I read the Silm.)

[mistrali1.livejournal.com]

I'm now giggling at the image of you in pink-and-yellow pyjamas and leopard print slippers.
Congrats on the grades! And I don't know why the Tolkien professor would feel the need to count a true-false questionnaire as part of his students' grade, esp. when he can't answer his own questions. But there you go: some people just can't teach, I guess.
About the friending thing - well, I don't care if people comment on my LJ or not. If they never post - and I mean never - I unfriend them, because I have no sense of their personality, likes and dislikes, 'voice' etc. But the main reason I unfriend people is if I can't connect with them. I've been defriended once or twice, but really, I haven't taken it personally. If people don't want to be friends with me, that's fine: usually I haven't hit it off with them either.

[dawn_felagund]

Well you might giggle all the more that I am currently clad in a huge fuzzy brown sweater and shorts covered with red and blue stars, rainbow fingerless gloves, and of course, the leopard-print slippers. ;)

The Tolkien class was just generally a nightmare. The guy really knew his stuff as far as Tolkien's influences but hadn't really given much thought to interpretation ... and he tried to sell us The Sword of Shannara as a serious book worthy of consideration in the same breath as LotR. *headsplode*

I have friends who have never posted too ... but that is mostly because they joined LJ just to follow my locked posts. So de-friending them is off-limits ... one is my husband! :D

[sinneahtes.livejournal.com]

I like to friend people because they seem to have a lot in common with me (interest-wise) and their personality (or writing) just seems to "click" with mine. Occasionally I'll friend someone when I'm only interested in reading their journal, but I think for the most part I friend people when I'm interested in getting to know the writer behind the posts (even if I don't expect we'll become the closest friends ever or anything, and it doesn't mean I need people to be any less private than they want to be, if that makes sense).

I don't do "friends cuts" either. I'm generally pretty good at keeping up with reading most of the posts on my friends page even when I'm really busy (if I miss any, it's pure scatterbrainedness that unfortunately happens even when I have all the free time in the world, or else scrolling past the few posts that don't concern me or make me feel uncomfortable), I don't really expect people to leave comments (I can't help but feel like reading each others' posts is a sort of interaction on its own in a weird sort of way, though I understand why someone who only reads and never comments might make someone else nervous) and when I friend people I generally try to avoid friending them on the basis of "their posts about this one narrow area of interest are fascinating, though I don't get any sense of what kind of person this is through those posts" so that I don't run into the problem of one of us moving away from that interest and losing all ability to relate to each other through LJ. Most of the de-friendings I've done are because the other person de-friended me first--largely because it's a quirk of mine to like things to be even and seeing a difference in the number next to the Friends list and the Friend Of list in my profile makes me feel nervous, but also because I'm aware I can't read minds and that however much someone swears, "This isn't personal! It's not a judgment about you!" I can't know that I haven't been ticking them off and that they weren't using their "friends cut" as a chance to remove me after having wanted to for a while. (Plus it just kind of feels weird for me to continue granting access to my locked posts to someone who removes my access to theirs.) *shrug*

I can only remember one or two times I've removed someone from my friends list before they removed me--like there was one girl I saw was a member of some shall we say questionable communities and posting "swastikas are love" colorbars in one of them... yeah. I'm not responsible for my LJ friends' opinions and actions, but in this corner of the universe they are the company I keep.

And good job in school! :D

[juno-magic.livejournal.com]

I don't really blog on LiveJournal, I only x-post as a courtesy to some of my friends who are on LiveJournal.

I don't have the time to deal with custom filters on LiveJournal to exclude this person or include that person. So I use the normal flist as my main privacy tool for LiveJournal. (For actually reading blogs and journals, I prefer using Google Reader, not the flist.)

As a result, I "unfriend" regularly. If someone has not been in touch with me in any way for a long time (via comments, mail, IM, Twitter ...), I don't see any reason to make my private stuff accessible to them.

"Friending" can be a good way of getting to know people. It makes shy persons feel more welcome to actually post comments, I think.

[rhapsody11.livejournal.com]

I am feeling quite spoiled with the Dawn overload this week :D I realised that miss chatting and talking to you. :)

Wooow the grades, woman, that is just awesome! However the Tolkien class... really?

As for the meme, over the years folks have purged their ell yay, have left LJ or left the fandom or there was nothing left of a friendship (really not even a bare thread), so they might have dropped, I actually have to look and see. I don't keep proper track I suppose. If someone unfriends me, I get a nice lil e-mail from LJ (which is utmost rare). Just once I had the wtf moment, but that was family drama and I happened to be on the lj of both sisters and such, one was more dramatic than the other and purged all friends they had in common from their lj. That was just very weird.

Other than that, usually my spidey sense knows it is coming (I might be blonde, but I am not dumb and I usually do know when folks are being weird & secretive). I do have a few zero tolerances: drama/wank needs at the expense of others, that is an immediate removal and when I or the poor person in question hear from others that person has declared that there was a falling out/argument/fight/wank that I have no clue about but there is plenty of slandering of a person going on and of course behind their backs while playing innocent when communicating with the affected person (this will forever make me go like, wth? I mean what is the use of that other than self glorification at the expense of someone else?). I am just not eating that drama bait and just continue with my own life, I have no use for such persons in my life. I have always been extremely up front about that at my LJ or towards others.

I don't think I ever made it to such an LJ-cut, come to think of it... I am personally too lazy to clean up. Spring break cleaning of the house is more than enough. Maybe once a year I remove the strike outs.

Filters and such: I do have a busy life and these days it is mostly about my two kids, and not everyone for their own reasons wants to read that, so I respect that wish and take them of the filter (usually they tell me or put it out there for anyone to see that they do not want to read stuff about babies and such). I have a writers filter for my fellow writers (my webdesigners buddies have no interest what so ever and the filter makes it easier for me to keep track of the entries in case I vaguely remember a thought and want to find it). When dad was so ill I used for some posts a different filter because I could have e-mailed, but that was a better idea somehow. Varied reasons, but usually also an organisational thing for me.

[binkaslibrary.livejournal.com]

Well, about de-friending: I was once treated as if I was a complete moron. Someone first blocked me out of their posts for no apparent reason, then abandoned her lj, got another one, deleted it, then got another one, and now this person in question pretends she doesn't know me (we've many mutual friends) and apparently thinks I would never figure who she was (hahaha!). And all that, without any explanation, but I only shrug at such an attitude.

[aranellaurelote.livejournal.com]

Well done! 99.8% is really near enough to 100 for it not to matter anymore (well, I think so! the marker of my classics paper who gave me 99.78% clearly did not...)

I haven't, to the best of my knowledge, de-friended anyone, but I don't ahve a huge flist anyway...
I was de-friended by someone a few months ago and then the next week re-friended, so I think that may have been by accident, who knows!
But I don't really post anything 'personal' and I do flist lock anything that isn't fic...

[surgicalsteel.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've definitely been defriended. Mostly as part of an 'I'm cleaning out my f-list' sort of thing - and I've defriended a couple of folks who defriended me first. Oh, and a couple of people that I just didn't feel comfortable interacting with them anymore, and I told them why pretty specifically.

And really awesome news on the grades! :)

[lilith-lessfair.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on your grades. That's wonderful news.

I'm pretty new to this online world, so I've been very interesting in what you and everyone else has had to say about being friended and defriended. Personally, I find the terminology both interesting and very clever as it suggests a degree of intimacy that I'm not entirely sure can be present, at least not immediately. I also haven't really figured out a balance of what to lock and what not to lock. At the moment, I'm mostly locking things related to rl and to rough drafts that I've circulated because I don't like to put work that's not where I want it to be on the archives; I don't really filter either. That said, I'm fairly shy and slow to add people to my f-list, though I've added anyone who's asked. But I'll usually wait until I've read someone's writing for a while or corresponded with them elsewhere before I add them to my list, and that's simply a function of me being more reserved and also not wanting to have a large list and not be able to manage it. I have been defriended and no explanation was given, but the person who'd friended me hadn't commented on my journal and I hadn't really conversed with her on hers or anywhere else. So it made sense and I didn't believe it was necessary to let me know as I simply assumed a decision was made that we didn't have enough similar interests for her to continue to read my journal and that's perfectly reasonable.

[fanged-geranium.livejournal.com]

Nice work with your grades - are the 99.8% marks for getting a single question wrong in the entire semester? But how on earth can a professor get away with answering his own questions wrong? Having said that, though, I suspect one of my professors in my final undergrad year mixed up his markscheme and used the answers for question 3 to mark question 2 (and vice-versa), and the uni refused to investigate.

[morethmusing.livejournal.com]

Heh - nice grades :)*Cheers*

On the 'friending' thing. *Shrug*. I don't think I've been unfriended so far - if I have been I didn't notice ;P I have friends who clearly have very different interests to me, but I think that's a great thing. Some (un-cut) posts can annoy me on occasion, but not so I'd freak. And, I find, the more you talk to people, the more you find they are interesting...

[lavished.livejournal.com]

Re: Friending

The only time I ever unfriended someone who didn't unfriend me first was a girl who was posting little one line entries consisting of song lyrics five times a day and really cluttering up my f-list. But generally, I don't really agree with unfriending, especially not "friends cuts" because I feel it's really pretentious and snobby. I don't comment on a lot of peoples' entries; not a lot of people comment on mine. And that's okay! I realize that people are busy, and even when they aren't, sometimes they just don't have anything to say!

Even if people I've friended because of common interests change their fandoms, I still don't really mind. Diversity, etc. Just because you're not obsessed with ______ like you were when I first added you, we don't need to quit being LJ friends!