Miscellaneous: To Friend or Not to Friend?

That is the question. Or, the question may be whether or not to unfriend. Sometimes the problem involves a decision about refriending--or being refriended. How long will it take for these words to appear in dictionaries?

I got to wondering recently about social networking etiquette. Knowing the Internet, there are Emily Post-style guides out there, but I prefer to muse in ignorance for the time being. 

I'm not the social networking type, really. I'm the sort that is, for the most part, quite happy all alone--reading, planting things, making wine, drinking wine, listening to music, driving in the California sunshine--I'm more than capable of keeping myself amused in solitude for long periods of time. Despite that (because of that?) I'm always the last person to leave a party. A party is a kind of story. I like to know how things turn out--not that I go to many parties these days.... I guess I hate unfinished stories. 

Having said all that, I recently joined Facebook. Why? mostly because an old friend from college in St. Louis asked me if I was a member. I got curious. Also, I had reason to believe I might find other old acquaintances there that I knew had joined recently. My biggest disappointment has been that you have to be officially connected with someone through the site beforehand to see their profile. You have to friend them or have been friended by them (there's a great example of a verb form for a grammar textbook--to have been friended--sounds oddly Shakespearean, too). On one level that makes the whole thing seem pointless, but I've decided it makes sense if you just understand that Facebook is intended more to allow friends to stay in touch, than as a tool for making new friends, and for that it seems to work well enough. I hate to admit it, but I've enjoyed my foray into social networking.   

But, back to etiquette. What if I have a "friend" that I  want to unfriend--someone I friended just to be polite? Oh dear. Do I tell him? Do I explain? Do I say nothing--silently unfriend him? Will he get a notification? Will I simply disappear from his friends list? I don't know, but I don't want to be rude. If I do unfriend him, will he try to refriend me, assuming my unfriendly behavior was a mistake? Then what do I do? Despite the facelessness of much of the communication on Facebook, we are social beings; the usual considerations of people's feelings seem to come into play. Perhaps countless unwanted Facebook friends just sit in other people's lists, unloved but somehow inviolate--like the pair of gaudy goblets in the garage that can't be thrown away because they were a present from a sister. Is there sympathy friending? In looking up old friends, I have come upon strangers with no friends at all, which seems sad. And what about people you want to friend, but feel you can't for some reason or other? How do you tell them how you feel? These are small mysteries.