When can you delete Facebook friends?

There are three types of friend on Facebook; those you actually know, those who you went to school with but never spoke to and those who you met on a night out once and added while a little bit drunk, promising you'd be best friends forever. Between them all these friends fill up your news feed with stories about their social life, their jobs, their pets and their kids and for the most part we just sit there and accept it because this is what living is now. We scroll past the majority of this junk until we find something remotely interesting enough to like or comment on or we realise it's someone's birthday, at which point we visit their wall and speak to them for the only time in 12 months. It's an everyday process for most of us, an intrinsic part of modern society and something we do naturally every morning just in case we've missed something super important during the night, despite this having never happened on any occasion before. 

But every once in a while something happens on Facebook to upset the balance of our routine. Something pops up in our news feed that is so off-putting, so unexpected and so horribly uncalled for that we simply have to take action. This action is either to comment on the thing that has upset us using CAPITAL LETTERS or just unfriend the offender which, let's be honest, will normally happen after shouting at them anyway. But be warned, unfriending someone is a treacherous process. You're tearing a rift that is near impossible to repair and you have to be sure you're doing this for valid reasons, after all adding someone back as a friend after you've deleted them can be more awkward than giving your neighbour their cat back after keeping it as your own for the previous 5 months. I can assure you, that is awkward. 

You need to be absolutely certain that removing your friend is the only possible option you have left. They need to have done something so bad, so awful that you have no other choice. 

There are, according to my rushed calculations, 5 reasons to unfriend someone. If you use one of these reasons the person you have unfriended can't possibly complain because they'll realise how awful they are after you've told them about it.

They're awful and deserve to be lonely.

Reason 1: They're disgustingly racist.

Has your friend liked a recent BNP Facebook status suggesting that all foreigners are the reason people are out of work? You can unfriend that person. It may also be nice if you explain to them how the recruitment process works: People send in their CV's. The best people get interviews. The best person gets the job. Those pesky immigrants eh? Coming over here, writing better resumes. How dare they?

Reason 2: They talk about their private life all the time then get annoyed when people ask them about their private life.

Does your friend constantly upload pictures of their children? Do they post statuses complaining about their partner? Do they regularly say really personal things that you don't give a crap about? Well that's annoying enough, you almost have a reason to unfriend them just for that. But what really seals the deal is when one day they post another status saying something along the lines of, 'Omg can't believe people are so insensitive it's my private life keep your noses out!' Alright, gladly. Cheerio.

Reason 3: They invite you to the same shitty club night every week despite you having never said yes. 

Look, I get Facebook advertising, I really do. You want as many people as possible to like your stuff and at first you might consider inviting all of your friends to do that. But, if two years later, some of your friends still haven't responded it might possibly be time to stop trying because they're going to start hating you. It's time you face the fact that I don't want to come to your club night and if you invite me again I am going to come round to your house and invite you to a club night with my fists. Did that threat make any sense? Was it scary? Nah, probably not, I'll just unfriend you instead. 

Reason 4: They're miserable. 

Life is a never ending struggle and every day will be harder than the last. We all accept this. We all get on with our stuff. Well, most of us do. Some find it impossible to get on with their stuff without informing everyone else that the stuff they're getting on with is really, properly hard. The fact that no-one loves you is not interesting to anyone else and the more you talk about it the less likely it is that you will ever find love in the future. In short, shut up, buck up and move on. If you don't then you're going to become socially lonely because I will start a revolution against you.

Reason 5: You're bored of them.

They might not be particularly awful, they might not hate black people or have five kids with different fathers who they hate and love at the same time and they might not constantly ask you to join them on farm based games but, unfortunately, they are just a bit dull. Do they post far too many cat memes? Do they share all their tweets on Facebook even though hashtags look utterly ridiculous when out of the Twitter context? It's not the worst crime in the world but I think you'll all agree it's bad enough. Bin them, it's in their best interest or they'll simply never learn.

Once you've got rid of a few of these people you'll find yourself enjoying Facebook a hell of a lot more. Unless, of course, you're one of the people who is being deleted. Then you'll just feel awful and rightly so.