Lost in Cyberspace

I just had a weird experience with email. One of my accounts is with AT&T (formerly BellSouth) and apparently AT&T is currently migrating all their mail to Yahoo. Somehow in the process 458 of my emails got temporarily "lost." At least I would call them lost - lost in cyberspace. But AT&T claims they never were really lost; my overly polite and courteous customer service agent told me tonight that AT&T knew where my emails were all the time. They just didn't get them to me.

Long story short...I was sitting at my laptop with Outlook open when suddenly emails started flying into my inbox, one right after another. I knew something was going on. I called and spoke with AT&T and they apologized, but still, I've got a mess to clean up.

It turns out that of the 458 emails only about 20 of them were anything even remotely approaching what you would call "important." Not a single one reached the "crucial" level. Still, it's scary to think people emailed me three weeks ago about something and I didn't get their email until tonight (I have already apologized to everyone who did). I suppose I rely too much on email; the failure to receive one, or worse, to respond to one can cause a lot of unnecessary grief and pain. Who wants a pastor who you can email, but who is apparently choosing to ignore you?

I am sure there is some deep philosophical, theological, or homiletical gem in this snafu somewhere, but for the life of me, I can't think of it tonight. Maybe I should just turn off my laptop and turn in. Yes...that's exactly what I'll do. Good night.

PS - if you ever email me and don't hear back within three weeks, please call.

Defriended!

It is a cruel world out there. A few days ago I got “defriended” on Facebook. I didn't know you could even do that. Turns out you are not actually notified when someone defriends you. You simply notice you are no longer seeing any updates from that person in your newsfeed (especially if they were a heavy Facebook user). That’s what happened with me. I realized I hadn’t seen anything from ___________ in a while so I tried to go to their Facebook page and it said, “Add as friend.” I had been defriended!

I did a little research on the topic and discovered the concept is so new the jury is still out on whether the word “defriend” should be hyphenated or not. Here is the entry for "defriend" in the Urban Dictionary.

Ending friendships face-to-face is difficult and awkward enough. So far no one is quite sure of the etiquette of how to do it properly. Most of the time out in the “real world” we simply ignore certain individuals we want to defriend and, over time, the friendship fades away. We rarely make public pronouncements (e.g. “I’m no longer your friend”), and so unlike online defriending there is seldom a single action that indicates it is over. Online, of course, we can do it swiftly and easily, by selecting the option, “Remove from Friends.” There’s no need for an explanation. It’s all over in a single click.

Of course sometimes defriendings are not about actually ending friendships. A defriending may not have anything to do with anger or lack of interest in the person being defriended, or passive-aggressive behavior. Instead it may be about lives that are changing where the person being defriended is no longer a part of your social circle. For instance, people move away, get divorced, change jobs, sue one another, change political views, and other tastes change. In short, people change and life situations change so our relationships change. There are plenty of reasons for defriending. I read where one woman had an uncomfortable defriending episode where she felt the need to defriend someone she barely knew that insisted on continually sharing far too much private information about their personal lives publicly.

Bottom line, for now there does not seem to be a way to defriend without the implied insult that goes with it. I am sure over time this will change. But for now – to the party that defriended me – no hard feelings!