friends cuts - what's your strategy?

[orangerful]

So I don't think I've done a friends cut in years. There are tons of dead journals in my friends list but since they are dead, I don't really noticed them until I need to look at my Friends list for some reason or when I get the birthday reminders and say to myself "who the heck is that?".

Sometimes people do reappear though so I worry about cutting them just because they were abandoned for the past few months.

What are your strategies for friends cuts? Do you just remove dead journals as you see them or do you do an annual culling?

Comments

[bookishgeek.livejournal.com]

If I can't look at a username and know their real name or a little something about them, I tend to cut them after a while.

[verdande-mi.livejournal.com]

I usually do a head-ups post where I say I will let go of old, none updated journals and any journal of people I no longer/have ever communicated with. I do like to be in some contact with the people I follow, but certainly I do not communicate the same amount with everyone and that’s all fine.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

As far as inactive people goes, it largely depends on how/when they became inactive and how close we were. I have a few people who vanished seemingly out of nowhere, and I've kept them because we were close, and/or because it was so sudden I'm a little worried Something Happened and want to make sure they're okay. Other people were drifting for a while, to the point at which we barely interacted anyway, so I'll generally cut them.

Actually, even if they're still active, I defriend them if we never really interact.

I've also become better about cutting dramatic people. I used to have people on my flist who would dictate what I posted to the point where I was apologizing constantly for having "offended" them; that's bullshit. So now I have a sort of unspoken policy that I'm allowed to post what I post, and while you're allowed to disagree, you're not allowed to attack me. I mean, once or twice is one thing; sometimes friends argue. But if I'm contemplating filtering you out of my entries because I know you'll be offended and start an argument, yeah, I cut you. I don't play games like that anymore.

[marshmallow.livejournal.com]

i have to admit, i have a hard time cutting solely on inactivity. when i came back, i cut a few where they were inactive and we weren't close to begin with, but people do come back sometimes, and i'm sentimental, so i've left most the way they were. i'm more likely to cut someone who is active, but who doesn't comment/respond to comments/etc., than i am to do so for someone who i was close with, but has just poofed from LJ. (and have had a couple of happy surprises since then of people who've returned!)

but to your question of when said cuts happen, it's more just when i notice it. i don't have a culling day on the calendar or anything. ;)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I haven't done a culling in a long time. I used to do them on a regular basis (couple times a year), but now? Meh. Like you said, I don't notice the dead LJs anymore, so I just leave them.

Basically the only thing that gets me to remove people from my friends list is posting too many memes or if their journal becomes one of those places that posts their Twitter feed and nothing else.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_profiterole_/]

I don't really see the point of cutting inactive people, since my posts are open anyway. It makes more sense to people who want to block "people who have become strangers" from reading their private entries.

[dreamchaser.livejournal.com]

I usually go through once a year and anyone who hasn't updated since then gets cut (if they come back to LJ, great - I am more than happy to add back on).

[geekslave.livejournal.com]

I've never really done a friends cut. Even if someone is inactive, I just don't notice - or I figure maybe they'll come around again - and since it's not affecting my journal really, I don't bother with it.

Stacey

[ragnarok-08.livejournal.com]

I usually see who hasn't commented or posted anything for a long time, and then I cut them.

[rogueslayer452.livejournal.com]

I've only ever unfriended those who have been inactive for years or we were no longer clicking, and it was a mutual thing. It can be harder to determine the inactive ones these days since people who haven't updated in a long time (and just abruptly left with no warning or other sites to reach them on any last entry) are slowly coming back so I keep them around just in case that happens.

Otherwise, I have never done a massive friends cut in all my years on this site.

[hamsterwoman]

I don't remove "dead" journals, because I keep hoping they aren't really dead. A number of people on my flist have returned after months, or even years, sometimes to post, sometimes to comment, and I would've hated to miss that. Plus just seeing their names on my profile brings back good memories.

[domluver.livejournal.com]

I'll usually try to cut dead journals or ones that haven't updated in years. Or if I can't place the user name or remember when or where I could've added them.

Or you could do the post where you are like "Who wants to stay?" Type of thing.

[c-hrista.livejournal.com]

I know people who actively HATE the "who wants to stay?" posts because it makes them feel like they need to ask permission to be kept around or something. I used to make those posts until I found out that some people were just like...rebelling and refusing to comment even if they wanted to stay (lol I guess it was a weird case of "I want you to want me [to be here reading]").

[c-hrista.livejournal.com]

I am super wary of friends cuts (I did a pretty intense one a few years ago and a bunch of people got mad at me which was really uncomfortable), but I rarely tend to bother with dead journals because, like others have mentioned, I am still hopeful they'll come back haha.

[domluver.livejournal.com]

That's understandable, I don't really like them myself. But it's the simplest way to see who is around rather than having to click every single name who is friends with you.

[c-hrista.livejournal.com]

This is definitely true! And people can put varying levels of effort into updating and checking LJ and commenting and all kinds of things.

At one point, I knew a girl that kept a spreadsheet of everyone that interacted with her journal, and would cut you if you didn't comment x times in a month. It was INTENSE. I don't like commenting if I've got nothing to say/add!

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

whoa, a spreadsheet? That is a level of intense I do NOT want to deal with LOL. That would be like a full time job, as much as you all comment :P

[c-hrista.livejournal.com]

RIGHT? She'd manually enter how many comments people left and she'd ~praise~ her top commenters and it was just weiiiiiiiiiiird.

[flirting.livejournal.com]

I usually cut dead journals, and or people I don't feel like there's a connection with.

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

She was clearly using Livejournal in a way that I don't use it...Sounds like something out of 'Mean Girls' with people competing to be the top person's BFF.

[c-hrista.livejournal.com]

Makes me think of:

[vibes.livejournal.com]

I usually remove them as I see them. Honestly if their on as little as they are then they probably won't even notice. :(

[penderies.livejournal.com]

If I know someone is on hiatus or having trouble, I don't pester them to be interactive, but generally if I've added someone and they don't talk to me/interact within a month I remove them, and then if there's a journal with nothing for months, I remove them as well. I'm totally on board with readding people, but LJ is about interaction and friendship and I don't want a one sided flist or dead journals. :p

[sideshow.livejournal.com]

I'm not active enough to do them anymore, but back in the day I'd usually remove anyone who hadn't updated in a certain number of months OR who had updated, but whose updates I never read and who I hadn't spoken to at all. Though there were a few that I'd always keep. And I'd put up a "friends cut" notification entry that I'd leave public so if somebody did come back, they'd be able to see it.

That said, I generally don't mind dead journals. It's more the people who update a lot but who I have nothing in common with that I'd be more likely to remove.

[howlin-wolf-66.livejournal.com]

I don't remove anybody, just in case they come back! :-)

[helloautumn.livejournal.com]

most of the journals i keep that have been abandoned are journals friends once had and one day, they just stopped posting to LJ and were more active on facebook and twitter, and i don't have the heart to remove them from my list, for sentimental reasons (like my husband's LJ. i won't remove it even though he hasn't properly updated since our wedding five years ago)

if i notice someone has been inactive for more than a year and they're not friended on social media elsewhere, i just remove the journal. no issues.

now, most times, i am the one that gets removed before i can remove anyone else. so when that happens, i just unfriend, no worries. (i do get a little sad, especially if it's from someone that i thought i had a connection to and they just up and unfriend me out of the blue. that hurts.)

if there is someone on my list that doesn't click, i just shoot them a message on here and just say "hey, this isn't working out, is it okay if we part?" and if they agree, cool. but i haven't had to do that because 9 times out of 10, i get removed first. (partly because i have a crazy update schedule and i try and comment all i can to journals.)

if there is someone that just makes me uncomfortable and rubs me the wrong way, i don't notify them at all, i just remove them and block them from commenting because it's just awkward.

[touchofgr3y.livejournal.com]

I always feel so bad about removing dead journals - WHAT IF THEY COME BACK and then they'll think I hate them! I have a ton of old abandoned journals from my pre-Facebook college days that will never get deleted. Instead of removing all of dead journals, I tend to filter posts so I have an idea of who is reading (and can always add in one of the old journals if they do actually come back). I tend to only remove people if I find we aren't clicking/I'm skipping their posts/they have done or said something I just can't deal with/was really mean/etc.

[elisi]

I have... *goes to check*... 286 people friended.

Can't remember the last time I unfriended someone. The sheer effort involved in going through them all is way beyond me. And what if I cut them and they came back?

[eowyn.livejournal.com]

I cull inactive journals of people I didn't know well, but keep those I did. I also cull journals of people who never, ever comment. I don't expect people to always comment - god knows I don't - but to lurk constantly makes me uncomfortable.

I don't make announcements about it... I just do eeet.

[icecoldrain.livejournal.com]

If I look at a username and/or lj page and have no clue who they are, I cut them. I cut dead journals, but usually after a while. I kept a few people for almost two years before I cut them because I always talked to them when they were around. I'm always up to re-adding them if they come back!

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

I remove people if they haven't posted in over a year or more usually, but it depends, there are some names that I like to still keep around if we were close once, even though the likelihood of them ever returning is slim

[twissie.livejournal.com]

I don't really have a set way of doing it. If I suddenly find that I have someone on my flist where I pretty much ALWAYS skip over their entries, I remove them. I'm on here (and so is everyone else, I think?) to connect with people - get a sneak peak into how people live on the other side of the planet, and mutual communication (commenting!) is a huge part of that connection.

Inactive journals I don't really bother with. There was a while back where I weeded out a lot of inactive journals that were all originally kept by people I knew IRL, but that's as far as I ever got. If people return and I find myself skipping over their posts/not remembering them or being able to reconnect, then see first paragraph above :P

[kaitydid33087.livejournal.com]

I almost never do a cut. I think I've done all of like, two or three over the years. I only cut if I'm not on their list anymore, or if they're purged.

[girlwhowaited.livejournal.com]

Keep me. Our IG accounts are fun too :D

[interchanges.livejournal.com]

When I did my cut a month ago, I cut anyone who hadn't updated/commented (at least that I remembered) in 2015 at all (so I kept a few that had commented even if they hadn't updated because I knew they were around; I didn't bother checking comments for people who had been updating). But my lj is friends only, so the idea of lurkers kind of makes me uncomfortable. I made a public post and emphasized I'd be happy to add people back if they return to lj (which is true). I'll probably do a similar cut at the end of the year/beginning of next year.

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

I usually do an announcement, let people know what I'll be doing, give them 24 hours (with the ability to message me if they thought they were cut and shouldn't've been) and then do the cuts. Haven't done one in a long, long while though.

*HUGS*

[place-to-hide.livejournal.com]

Some journals that I'd believed to be dead and I removed them then I came to find out they removed me back. Which was weird. I thought are they lurking? or Just not posting or commenting?

I cleaned out all the dead journals one time.

[katmarajade.livejournal.com]

I go through every once in a while when it comes to my attention and look through everyone I've friended. I will keep "dead" journals if I was close with the person, part for nostalgia, part hoping they'll return someday! I do delete journals with whom I never interacted. I find that there are often a few of those on my list, especially after friending memes or whatever. If I've never seen a person post and they never comment on my journal, then I tend to cut them after a while. (I do give them months, even a year! I don't get around to cutting very often.)I don't have any set in stone rules for doing so though.

[kael1030.livejournal.com]

I tend to only remove people that have removed me for whatever reason or have deleted journals.

I keep others on endlessly... Just on the off chance they might come back... Some do now and again so I feel bad if I don't leave them on there. lol

[blizzardskies.livejournal.com]

I am a loyal hoarder, I never get rid of anyone.

[tellshannon815.livejournal.com]

If someone removes me I remove them straight back, but otherwise I tend not to do cuts. I have issues around losing contact with people, which stems from the sudden death of a friend who I hadn't talked to in a while before he died, and I feel too guilty to remove anyone for inactivity. I'm never the one to cut off contact.

Having said that, there have been times lately when I've wondered about it. Sometimes I'll get a notification saying "So and so's birthday is coming up!" and I have to stop and think "Who's so and so?" In those cases, I have wondered about it because I'm more comfortable with knowing who's reading my posts. I can be a lot more open on LJ than I would be on Facebook about RL because I don't have RL contacts as friends on here and it won't get back to the wrong person, and I'm thinking now I don't really want to be sharing things with people I never communicate with. At Exjob I had someone snooping on my Facebook and reporting back to my crazy coworker who I never got along with (long story) and while I doubt that it would happen on LJ I still think I want to try and avoid it.

If we interacted regularly once, but the person has been inactive, then I won't cut.

I had one person once, who at a particularly bad time in my life, told me I should post more happier posts and not negativity. To this day I don't know why I didn't unfriend her at the time. In the end, she changed her journal and I just never added the new one. In fact, thinking about it, I did cut her old username after I got a birthday notification and thought "Why do I still have her?"

[impalalove]

I'm definitely more of a casual "oh, I haven't talked to you in years, you haven't updated in months," defriend. I'm also way more casual about it then I used to in the past about it, I don't announce the unfriend stuff.

[tigtogiba34.livejournal.com]

I has always wondered why you had cut me I just figured we didn't click or somesuch. I was in my fuckit phase and didn't bother asking why

[tigtogiba34.livejournal.com]

I think I have a public post about this. And it is long winded.

http://tigtogiba34.livejournal.com/1433519.html

[teagues-veil.livejournal.com]

For me it really depends on where *I'm* at. When I feel like I need a more intimate flist, otherwise I'll leave LJ, then I tend to delete anyone whose name doesn't automatically ring a bell. BUT, I'll normally follow that up with a public post that says I did the friends list cut and they have the option of commenting to let me know they'd like to stick around. Sometimes I don't do that though, and just get rid of a shitton of people. As I said, it's more about where I'm at on my end than anything else. If I need to delete a bunch of people to make me comfortable posting on my journal after a period of absence, then that's what I'm going to do.

The cut I do the most often though, is the generic "comment to remain" kind, where I have a bunch of dead journals I plan to cut but JUST IN CASE they see it, they can comment to the post saying they want to remain.