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Unfriending
Unfriending

Learn English: meaning of unfriending English lesson

Date: Jan 31 2020

Themes: Friend, Pop Culture, Tech

Grammar: Zero Conditional

Intro

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2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

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Friends. We love them, but we also get mad at them. We don’t see enough of them, and then sometimes we see too much of them. Our friends are there for us in both the good times and the bad times. Friendship takes work, but life would be pretty boring without it.

We started using the word friend as a verb about ten years ago. It’s common to describe the connection between two people on a social networking site like Facebook as “friending.” But if you can friend someone, you can also unfriend them, and it’s difficult not to take it personally if you’ve been removed from someone’s list of friends. Sometimes you know why, but often it’s just confusing.

Lily is sad because she was unfriended by someone, and Rafael is trying to help her understand. Read more in today’s English lesson about internet relationships.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

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2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Lily

Lily

Rafael

Rafael

Lily:  Rafa.

Rafael:  Hey, Lily. What’s going on?

Lily:  I just got unfriended by someone on Facebook.

Rafael:  Don’t take it personally. I do that to people all the time.

Lily:  What? You do that to people?

Rafael:  I’m the kind of person who likes to just be efficient. If I don’t talk to somebody who’s my Facebook friend for a while, I’m just going to unfriend them. No offense!

Lily:  But what you’ve got to understand is, even though social networking... it can seem really removed from actual life, people are actually investing a lot in their profiles. And it breaks my heart when people don’t want to hear about me anymore.

Rafael:  This is actually reminding me of a story of a friend I had on Facebook who kept sending me all of these messages that were just bugging me. One day I… I’m unfriending them.

Lily:  Well, but don’t you feel like you owe it to someone to talk to them in person before?

Rafael:  But Lily, what if you haven’t talked to them in ages? Think about it.

Lily:  I’m still hurt. I know it’s a fact of life that people grow apart. But I feel like if you’re going to be someone’s friend on Facebook in the first place, don’t you owe it to them to actually be friends with them? Or make that effort to get to know them better if they’re your friends? Why would you friend somebody who wasn’t your friend in the first place?

Rafael:  Do you miss those people that unfriended you?

Lily:  No.

Rafael:  Just move on.

 

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Discussion

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Lily’s feelings are hurt. Someone unfriended her on Facebook, and it’s difficult for her not to take it personally. In Lily’s opinion, people shouldn’t “friend” each other on a social networking site if they’re not interested in each other’s lives. It doesn’t make sense to her that she can be friends with someone one day but not the next.

Rafael is very practical when he thinks about unfriending. He understands why someone would take him off their list of friends if they haven’t spoken or seen each other in ages. Likewise, he has no problem with taking people off of his own list of friends. Rafael believes that he’s being efficient by removing people who he doesn’t know very well.

Have you ever been unfriended? How did it make you feel? Are you OK with unfriending people yourself?

 

Comments

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Shoba

Shoba

Sri Lanka



Hello dear ScienceBoy,


You have given us some food for thought by your sound comment. Specially, the information you have shared about the number of friends we can manage is very interesting. 


Take care.



12:43 PM Feb 07 2015 |

Dharanisri

Sri Lanka

Awesome ! lesson

03:30 AM Feb 07 2015 |

1 person likes this

dodgewiper

dodgewiper

Iran, Islamic Republic Of

unfriending is not big of a deal! it doesn’t mean that someone starts to be your enemy. just take it easy guys :)

07:38 PM Feb 06 2015 |

ScienceBoy

ScienceBoy

Turkey

Thanks for support buttafly, 


@Ola33,


Main idea is to learn English on Ebaby for sure but I’ve made some amazing friends on this site as well. It’s fun when we learn together.

06:45 PM Feb 06 2015 |

dayu1

dayu1

Mexico

In my opinion :) social network not defined how important is a person or a friend in our life, but it could help to keep in touch with them, if we are really interested in someone… and we don’t have time, it doesnt matter at the end we will find a way to talk with them… :)

06:22 PM Feb 06 2015 |

ola33

ola33

Japan

Scienceboy, Englishbaby for me is to learn English mostly. That’s why I’m here.

02:17 PM Feb 06 2015 |

Djana

Djana

Algeria

I’ve been infriended and i alwso heve infriended some peaple,and actually i didn’t take it personally! it’s ok

01:31 PM Feb 06 2015 |

buttafly

buttafly

Germany

ScienceBoy. Well put!


Know where you belong and you don’t need to accumulate thousands of “friends”.They just consume your life. Not worth it at all.  IMHO :) 

01:27 PM Feb 06 2015 |

ScienceBoy

ScienceBoy

Turkey

 Dear Shoba, I agree with you. I see some people have 1000 friends on FB. Are they all really friends. I dont think so. Personally I have like 260 friends on facebook but maybe 30 or 40 of them are my real friends. The others are acquaintances. Not friends.


I read an article about friendship in a scientific magazine and in this article the author pointed out that there is a limit for having real friends. If I am not mistaken, the limit was 150 friends. Anyway, I am not sure if this is scientifically true or not but it doesn’t seem possible to have 1000 friends. I discusees this number with one of my ebaby friends here Yulia (Julie3), I don’t know if she remembers but she said even 150 is a lot. Well, she is one of the real ones no doubt. And Ebaby is not just a site for learning English, in my opinion, Ebaby is the best friendship site too. Better than FB. I don’t know everyone here but I enjoy reading everyones comments. Everyone is friendly.


I have been unfriended but never unfriended anyone. If someone is my real friend, I keep this friendship forever and never think about unfriending a real friend. If someone is not a real fiend, I wouldn’t call it “unfriending” if I remove them from my list.

01:20 PM Feb 06 2015 |

Crizsearch

Crizsearch

Indonesia

I don’t take it personally when someone unfriend me on facebook, I understand that on virtual world sometime we don’t make relation in ages. Maybe they are busy on their real life and if the relation is not worth anything, just be efficient and go unfriend them… I agree with Rafa.

01:13 PM Feb 06 2015 |

ola33

ola33

Japan

Englishbsby, lots of people left or changed their profiles and nicks. The bottom line: take it easy with ’ friends’ friending or unfriending.

12:35 PM Feb 06 2015 |

2 people like this

ola33

ola33

Japan

About Facebook, in my opinion, if wanna lose a friend, go there! I

12:28 PM Feb 06 2015 |

ola33

ola33

Japan

When the friend leaves you, make the most of it!

12:20 PM Feb 06 2015 |

2 people like this

tennisball

Germany

I only like friends to who I can speak from face to face.


I’ts very interessting to see the feelings on the facial expression.

10:58 AM Feb 06 2015 |

1 person likes this

Ya Nina

Kazakhstan

I support both points of view. I agree with Lily and would like to see in my social network only closed interesting people which feel same feeling to me.


On the other hand, I understand Rafael’s opinion and try to delete from my list of friends those people which become boring, annoying or not interesting for me.

08:47 AM Feb 06 2015 |

1 person likes this

buttafly

buttafly

Germany

Dear julito… (humming All-4-One)  “I swear by the moon and the stars in the skies – you’ll stay there” ✌


I am more than glad this wall serves its purpose. Peer learning is really beneficial, right? :)

06:17 AM Feb 06 2015 |

fcf515

fcf515

Taiwan

Nowadays, most of people have their own social networking sites and Facebook is the most popular one among my friends and me. I like following my friends’ updates and reading the posts they share on FB. I seldom update my FB and I guess that’s why I was also once unfriended by an ex-colleague. I was hurt a little but then felt OK with her decision. There are a few friends I’d like to take off of my own list of friends, but I think they will feel hurt once they find out. Lucky that FB has a function which users can choose not to follow those who are disturbing or unfamiliar with.

05:56 AM Feb 06 2015 |

Shoba

Shoba

Sri Lanka



Social networks are full of “here today, gone tomorrow” kind of friends. I wouldn’t worry too much if anyone chooses to unfriend me, even if that person is someone I counted as “reliable”. It just means I’m a poor judger of character. 


On the other hand, I have removed one or two people from my list of friends when they posted obscene things on my wall. I will continue to do so in future too if any of my contacts “misbehave” without a second thought. But I have never unfriended anyone just to be efficient or for not communicating in ages. 


Personally I think the word “friend” has lost its real meaning in the recent years because of all these social networks. 



05:23 AM Feb 06 2015 |

S&W

S&W

China

Yes i had been unfriended by someone.On opposite,I didn’t feel frustated at all.If this person decided not to be my friend,why i waste my time to be sad.Usually,i don’t accept friends request without reading profiles,comments,watching photoes.

03:01 AM Feb 06 2015 |

perizat

Kyrgyzstan

I am very glad that could, learn new words. I don’t why, but readind the topic about unfriendind was easy to understand, and the vocabulary was very easy to remember. 


 About unfriending friends on facebook, I would agree with it. Because, I added people I didn’t know, and they posted a lot of bad things, then  I had to unfriend them((


02:31 AM Feb 06 2015 |

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