Rejection – it’s one of the worst experiences of the human condition. If you’ve never felt the blistering sting of rejection you’re either an emotionless android or… or… well, there is no “or.” Every human being has been rejected many, many times over his/her existence. And if that rejection didn’t hurt, then you need to turn in your Humanity Card, because you’re no longer one of us.
Rejection comes in many forms, and it’s especially commonplace in the all-too-brutal childhood years. Children can routinely be rejected dozens of times in a single day. Some mornings parents are openly excited to push their kids into someone else’s care for the day. Sometimes the cool kids on the bus refuse to sit next to the not-so-cool kids. Somebody has to be the last one picked for kickball.
Lord knows I had my share of rejections as a kid. I remember one specific time in the 7th or 8th grade we were choosing teams to play flag football. The selection process ended with me still standing there while everyone just turned away to start the game. Translation: I wasn’t picked. At all. Both teams would rather be a man-down than have me on their side. Forget that fact that at the time I was a few years into playing Pop Warner football, so it’s wasn’t exactly like I had never gripped a football before. But I’m not bitter. In fact for almost thirty years now I’ve thought about it every day and congratulated myself profusely for not being bitter at all.
And while the number of rejections may decrease in adulthood, the sting can be just as painful. Sometimes even worse. Getting passed over for promotions at work, rejected by the opposite sex, and struggling to find meaningful friendships can cause even more anxiety than standing in that ever-dwindling kickball selection lineup. The sad truth is that the really cool kids in school with their really cool friends in their really cool cliques grow up to be really cool adults with really cool adult friends in really cool adult cliques.
As an adult, oh yeah I’ve seen rejection. Women? More rejections that I can count. Promotions? Don’t get me started on that or I’ll go into a profanity-laden tirade that I’d surely regret later on. Friends, well, I’ve actually been pretty lucky there.
The explosion of social media over the past few years has taken the experience of rejection to new levels. Levels I never could have imagined that day in the early 80s as I stood there hoping against hope to be picked for the flag football game (I’m still not bitter). Kids and adults have taken to social media in unprecedented numbers. There are over a billion members on Facebook. Think about it for minute, how many people do you know who aren’t on Facebook? I would run out of names before I ran out of fingers to count on if I tried to name the ones I know.
So now we have this easy, convenient, impersonal way to reject others. Woo-hoo!
The simplest rejection is the ignored friend request. You send someone a request to connect on Facebook and they simply ignore it. Sometimes it’s no big deal, sometimes it’s baffling. I had an experience like this a few years back that would fall under the baffling category. There was a very nice family that went to our church and their son was also in my daughter’s class at school. My daughter is special needs, and sometimes it just seems easier to interact with other parents of special needs kids. It’s just more comfortable. There’s just this implied sense of understanding and camaraderie that comes from shared experiences. And the fact that they attended our church? Bonus! I sent friend requests to both parents and waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing. Ever.
The first thing I did was check to see how many friends each had. Obviously if they only had 30 or 40 friends, well that would make sense. That would mean that they only connected with family and close friends. Well, guess what? They both had over 200. Hmm. To this day I still have no idea why they didn’t accept the friend requests. I just went on smiling and pretending every time I saw them – which was often. Is it devastating that a couple of virtual strangers ignored my friend requests? Nah. Is it a rejection? Yep.
The biggest e-rejection of all has to be the unfriend on Facebook – the act of severing a once connected friendship. More than the ignored friend request, the unfriend begs the question what did I do wrong? Was it politics, religion, sports, over-posting?
I’ve been unfriended by people who represent every conceivable definition of the word friend. I’ve been unfriended by coworkers, ex-coworkers, friends of my mother, mothers of my friends, people I’ve known 6 months, and people I’ve known 26 years. Sometimes I’m amused and wonder what I did to offend them; other times I feel that sting of rejection and wonder just what the hell I did to offend them.
For me the moment of discovery is always the same. I’m on someone’s page and suddenly realize a friend we should have in common is no longer there. For example: I’m friends with Tim and Tom and one day I’m on Tim’s page and I see the section that lists the friends we have in common and Tom isn’t there. That’s the uh-oh moment. That’s the moment you realize you’ve been dropped. You’ve been defriended. Unfriended. Rejected.
That’s the thing about the unexpected unfriending – there’s no room for misinterpretation. If you’re dropped by someone who still keeps an active Facebook account the message is clear – I don’t like you anymore. Ten years ago if you tired of someone’s friendship you could just kind of let it fade away quietly into the night. Now it’s as final as deleting a file in Excel. It’s gone. You’re gone. The friendship is over.
Facebook, and other forms of social media, are wonderful technological advancements that have impacted the vast majority of civilization. I once heard it described this way: “Facebook changed the culture of the world.” And it did. I’m now able to stay in contact with friends and family members that otherwise may have drifted away. I’ve reconnected with friends from high school that I hadn’t interacted with in any way since the day I graduated nearly 24 years ago. I’ve even discovered family I didn’t know I had and developed new friendships that never would have been possible outside of Facebook.
But the rise of social media has also opened the door to the new and equally damaging forms of rejection I detailed above. They may be e-rejections, but they are real rejections.
So what is one supposed to do? Just pretend he doesn’t care? Most anyone who claims, “I just don’t care what others think about me” is probably lying. If you really didn’t care you wouldn’t feel the need to proclaim it. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” some really smart British guy once wrote. So after reading this, please don’t tell me that you just don’t care about rejections. Unless, of course, you’re an emotionless android.
I just hope someone doesn’t read this and then decide to unfriend me because of it…
Cyring in the Rain
What I sometimes do after being unfriended
