"Unfriend" Guilt

There is a phenomenon exclusive to the social media area. The ability to "unfriend" someone.

In "irl" (in real life) relationships, unfriending is not usually a conscious act (unless they're a person who treats you horribly and you consciously severe all ties, but I'm going to compare that to "blocking" later). You just drift apart from someone you were once close to until you're no longer friends.

In the world of social media, be it facebook, twitter, tumblr, instagram, etc. you can consciously choose to never see a word from a person ever again, at least in that particular medium. And often times, when we go to unfriend or unfollow a person/blog that has started to annoy us, we feel more than a little guilty, or at least I do.

Unfriending someone is usually a process for me:

1. I hide them from my newsfeed but keep them in my friend's list. Sometimes, this is enough, if I actually like the person and it's just their posts on FB that irritate me. Sometimes, I go to step 2
2. I consider unfriending them....for a couple weeks at least. I don't ever unfriend someone easily. I'm not sure why, I think it has something to do with an ex-friend that took everything that happened on Facebook super personally. She now has me blocked because I unfriended her because I was tired of seeing her bitch about her ex-husband (also a friend of mine, whom I actually like a lot more) on Facebook. Not because I did anything to her personally (on the contrary I was quite kind to her when she and her husband split) but because I unfriended her. 
3. I actually unfriend them. This is the point where I have finally have had enough (like aforementioned bitchy poster above) and have gotten over the initial guilt stage. 
4. I wonder if I made the right choice. Yes it's facebook. Yes, it's stupid...but it's how I keep in touch with 90% of the people I consider friends. Removing one of those friends is a big deal to me. I don't care about Facebook, but I do care about the people in my friends list. I don't usually friend random strangers (I do have some people in my friend's list that I've never personally interacted with, most of them I've met through groups or pages) so it's like actually removing a friend from my life when I unfriend. 
5. I accept my decision or I refriend depending on my conclusion in the above step. 

BLOCKING someone is even more of a process. In my opinion, the block function is there to keep people from harassing you. The only people I have blocked are 2 individuals who made me feel horrendous about myself, the first being a guy from a My Little Pony group I was in who attacked me for a situation involving the admins of the group, including pot shots at me for unrelated reasons and on the day my grandmother passed away. The second is a biggoted asshole who refuses to see other points of view and would jump down your throat for disagreeing. The first I didn't want coming after me again. The second I didn't want to see his posts, otherwise I would engage in conversations that would just upset me.

If I block someone it's usually only if I feel unsafe or unhappy being visible to them.

But even then there can be a massive amount of guilt involved in preventing someone from seeing any of your posts. A friend of mine was being harassed by a "nice guy" who wanted to date her, but that she had no interest in. He wouldn't leave her alone and at urging from her friends, she blocked him, long after she should have. The guy IMMEDIATELY messaged ME asking if I knew her and asking if I knew a way to get in touch with her.
1) This is what the block function is there for. 

2) CREEP ALERT

I'm not sure why blocking and unfriending induce a sense of guilt in me (and possibly in others) It's very silly to take social media so seriously (and in most cases I don't) but it really bothers me. 

Then there's the facebook group member situation.
I run a simple fan group for My Little Pony.
One guy in the group drives me absolutely insane. He's older (old enough to have a grandkid at least) and mostly internet illiterate. But that's the tolerable stuff.
If I post a set of pictures, he feels the need to go and comment on EVERY SINGLE FREAKING ONE with some kind of "caption" like comment. He also comments on literally everything I post.

I just now as I'm writing this unfriended him (I must have already completed step 1, I'd forgotten he was still my "friend" ) but as he hasn't broken any of the rules in my group I don't feel justified removing him from that.
Technically, it's my group and I can remove/add whomever I want, but Facebook groups have an even more rigid set of social rules, especially if rules have already been established for the group to follow. Arbitrarily doing things will result in uproar from members. (See guy I blocked)

So I can't escape this guy, even though he drives me crazy. I could block him, but as admin of the group, I have to be able to monitor posts for rule breaking, so that's out.

I guess what I'm saying is there's a whole new social structure for making and keeping friends when you're online than there is in real life.