Dear Amy: The #SMEtiquette of the Mass Unfollow

First, a bit of info: We got a nice number of replies to last week's polls: 34 folks responded, with most saying they'd never use an app that automated part of their relationship. Seeing as most folks said no, we had only a few people responding to the second question. One was absent-minded, the other two chose "other." The polls are still open, so feel free to add your response.Now, on to this week's question. It deals with the phenomenon of mass unfollowing that rears its head from time to time on social media. I'm not talking about the Twitter unfollow bug that occasionally has us no longer seeing updates from many folks we never meant to unfollow. I'm talking about people who suddenly discover they don't want to be connected to all these people they spent years building relationships with.There are many reasons. All of them are, in a sense, legitimate. But some are more understandable than others.Don't forget: Submit your questions!

Dear Amy:I thought I was friends with this person I’ll call Steve. One day I realized we were no longer connected on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or anywhere else, for that matter. Then I discovered Steve had done this with a lot of other people. What happened?Unhappily Unfollowed

Dear Unhappily:There’s a name for this syndrome: Mass unfollowing. People do this for different reasons.Some people follow back everyone to build up their numbers on various social platforms, then do a mass purge so their numbers show far more people following them than they are following. Makes them look good.Some people started out in social connecting with just about anyone and later realized their feeds were a mess and decided to start over, dumping all their connections and reconnecting with those they really had an interest in.Some people find themselves having to censor themselves too much in their online lives and so occasionally cut back on their connections to keep their online circle to those they feel they can trust.I have no idea what the reason is that Steve disconnected from you, so I’ll address the different etiquette behind these different reasons.The mass purging to juke your numbers is just rude. If you followed people for the sole purpose of gaining followers, well, don’t be surprised when others stop following you when you unfollow them. That’s why the people who do these mass unfollows have to do these purges often – they’ve followed so many people again to get their numbers up that they have to cut down to keep their numbers looking good.If that’s the reason Steve purged you, consider yourself fortunate. You have no reason or obligation to continue following on Twitter, Facebook or elsewhere, unless you’re truly interested in what Steve has to say and want to stick around.The other two trends in mass unfollowing are a bit trickier, and there are legitimate reasons for both. Those who do the unfollowing, however, need to recognize there can be hurt feelings and be prepared for the consequences.I used to follow a lot more people on Twitter than I do now. My Twitter feed became completely unusable. Lists came out long enough after I’d started on Twitter that building the lists of the people I was following was laborious and extremely time-consuming. But I needed to do something.I found that many of the people I’d followed I didn’t really have an interest in. Maybe I had at some point; maybe I followed them back to be polite – I’m not really sure, but I had to fix it. So I used a tool to help me find inactive users. I personally checked each account to make sure it was inactive. Some of those inactive accounts I stayed following, because they were personal friends. But people I didn’t know who hadn’t tweeted in six months or a year? Easy decision to unfollow.That didn’t solve my Twitter feed, though, of course. I started spending more time viewing my main Twitter feed and unfollowing people I saw tweeting nothing but RSS feeds. I used tools to find people tweeting about certain subjects that I was not interested in, then vetted each of those accounts personally to make sure I really didn’t want to follow these people.It took me about a year to unfollow several thousand people. I did it very slowly because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t just purging people to purge them. I knew that my follower numbers would suffer for it, but I was OK with that. If someone didn’t want to follow me, that was his decision.On Facebook, when someone pops up and I don’t even know who they are or how I know them, I take a look at their profile, at our mutual friends, at our relationship history on Facebook. If I can’t find any time we’ve ever interacted and I have no idea how or why I know that person, I often will unfriend. I’ve never had anyone ask me why, because they probably didn’t know how or why we were friends, either.And if they did ask me, well, I’d be honest. It’s the least I can do.Unfollowing and unfriending are kind of the nuclear options of social. Many people take extreme offense at this. So when you’re unfriending people, you need to be aware that some people are going to be upset at this.But if you find that you have to censor yourself just to have a civilized conversation on social media, well, you may well have no other choice than to cull some of your friends. It’s your social stream, and you have the right to get rid of the people who make you uncomfortable.They also have the right to be offended by this. Unhappily, if you really want to know why Steve disconnected, you might send a note – a very simple, polite note – asking why. Say that you just wanted to know if you offended him in some way, that you’re not asking for him to reconnect, you just want to ensure you weren’t rude.But if Steve isn’t a longtime friend, someone you’ve grown to trust and admire, someone you’ve confided in, enjoyed conversations with – in short, if Steve isn’t more than a social media connection, someone you’re going to miss having in your social media life, well, just let it be. Disconnect on your end if it makes you feel better, or stay connected if you’re truly interested.The choice is yours.