When I went to send a message the other day to Rabbi Rabbs I noticed that he didn’t pop up in my screen of friends, this was the first time in my entire Facebook career that I had noticed when someone un-friended me. In the land of social networking this is apparently a big deal, de-friending one of your facebook friends is seen as a real back stabbing thing to some people, I wouldn’t be surprised if teenage girls committed suicide over this sort of thing.
I have been informed multiple times by people who wished to twist the social networking knife, that they were not my friends on facebook anymore, I really couldn’t care less, but knew it was a big deal for these folks who were obviously deeply offended by status updates such as “does anyone want to have me for shabbos lunch?” and “Heshy is wondering why starbucks espresso is so bad.” Everything is offensive to someone, so I guess these folks couldn’t take my constant status updates and profile picture changes.
I guess when you have 100 friends, you notice these types of things, but you have to remember that I’m the shit – why else would I have 4300 Facebook friends with my backup account having another 800? Being the facebook king means you don’t have time for trivialities like checking your inbox, responding to requests and playing farmville – apparently some folks are deeply offended by this too.
I have reason to believe that Rabbi Rabbs may have defriended me because I had failed to respond to a phone message, email or some sort of facebook message he left me. Obviously he doesn’t know me too well, my good friends know that getting in touch with me can sometimes take weeks (unless they are cute girls I am courting, then miraculously I am available) I am in my house for sleep and that is all. I tend to work evenings and ride during the day, I don’t pick up my phone often and rarely take it with me on rides or hikes.
Now let’s talk about Facebook messages, in my opinion they are for lazy people, Facebook inboxes are chock full of spam, do you know how much spam I get? Try 50 messages a day, plus an average of 500 some odd requests to become a fan, join some group or play some game (I block all apps and block people who send them too often) so if I don’t respond, please don’t take offense, just email me and eventually I may get back to you (sometimes it takes months) Oh and I don’t text!
So back to Rabbi Rabbs, I can;t say I was offended, but I do say I noticed and took heed, don;t know how to actually take heed, but I sighed and said, hmm – I wonder why he unfriended me? His posts did really well, we have similar senses of humor and he’s way fun to make videos with and he pushes peoples buttons, but alas, we are not friends anymore – on facebook – when I go to LA next (I’ve been once since I moved here) maybe I’ll knock on his door and see what’s up – hope I didn’t offend enough that we can’t make any more movies together.
Perhaps he de-friended you because being your “friend” caused something to pop up in his email that he found superfluous. My own experience with Facebook is that I accumulated lots of acquaintances as “friends”: who sent out (to all their friends) invitations to do or see certain things. These resulted in email solicitations.
I eventually withdrew altogether from Facebook, and haven’t missed it one bit, but I am concerned that the use of the term “friend” on Facebook causes precisely this level of angst. If you remove a contact, you’re not giving insult. By calling it de-friending, Facebook has made it impossible for you to lower your involvement with their enterprise, without giving offense.
That sucks
Facebook sucks, I know of a few horror stories myself.
Generally, I know when I’ve offended someone…it happens fairly frequently, we have a long and arduous debate which generally ends in me either asking them if they’ve been diagnosed with a mental illness/personality disorder/learning disability or them calling me an anti-Semite/ignorant/bloodsucking money-grabber.
FaceBook is very confusing. It is possible he was trying to ‘like’ something you posted and accidentally hit the wrong button.
Perhaps he de-friended you because being your “friend” caused something to pop up in his email that he found superfluous. My own experience with Facebook is that I accumulated lots of acquaintances as “friends”: who sent out (to all their friends) invitations to do or see certain things. These resulted in email solicitations.
I eventually withdrew altogether from Facebook, and haven’t missed it one bit, but I am concerned that the use of the term “friend” on Facebook causes precisely this level of angst. If you remove a contact, you’re not giving insult. By calling it de-friending, Facebook has made it impossible for you to lower your involvement with their enterprise, without giving offense.
I never send out anything, I’m the anti-spam, hence the reason I don’t have a newsletter like every other mildly successful online person. I only send group messages out when I have a show and that tends to be very infrequent. I block people who send me application requests.
poor guy
You make movies with him? I see, this is why you don’t have a girlfriend. You have your little rabbi friend for pleasure
very distasteful, find other ways of being rude to people rather than implying that they are homosexual. It actually isn’t an insult, except in the minds of homophobic people like you
Maybe he deleted his facebook account?
Heshy, Return the phone call already.
indeed, why not take this up with him privately?
“I wouldn’t be surprised if teenage girls committed suicide over this sort of thing. ”
That comment was kinda in poor taste, Hesh.
FYI, this is what Rabbi Rabbs wrote on his FB regarding this issue:
“As those of you that I tagged are probably already aware, and many others of you reading this might also know, Heshy Fried a.ka. Frum Satire, posted in his blog today about how I deleted him from my friend list on Facebook. Here is what he wrote:
https://www.frumsatire.net/2010/10/24/someone-un-friended-me-on-facebook-and-i-actually-took-notice/
I see that he along with some of you have already speculated as to why I deleted him, so I will now respond to his article and clarify as to why I did it. I would prefer contacting him directly to discuss the issue with him in private, but it seems he ignores my efforts to contact him, and that is why I deleted him in the first place. So, instead, I will reply to him publicly here on Facebook, and those of you who are friends with Heshy are welcome to forward this note to his attention, although I would not be surprised if he never sees it.
I also want to point out that it is Heshy and not me that made this a public spectacle, because he could have written to me privately or called me to discuss the issue, but instead, he chose to post a blog to air out our dirty laundry. In his blog post, he wrote that he wanted to send to me a message last week. Well, that is news to me, because I never received anything from him, and unlike Heshy, I stay on top of who is contacting me, and read all of my emails and messages in a timely fashion.
So, it appears he chose not to contact me even though he could have messaged me on Facebook to ask me what happened. It is not as if I had blocked him. Or, he could have written to my email, or even phoned me. But, instead, he chose to go public.
The last time I saw Heshy, I walked him to his car down the street from me, and the last words we shared were about his stand-up comedy career. We agreed that he needed a strong MC/host to warm up his audiences for him, a service that normally costs substantial money, and as a friend, someone who cared about his career, I volunteered to do that for him for free. He seemed very positive about the prospect of sharing the stage with me at an upcoming show.
That was in February. Fast forward to the summer, when someone here in Los Angeles that books events for a local Jewish organization approached me because they wanted to have me perform a show for that organization during one of the nights of Sukkos. I do not like performing for Jewish audiences, and normally, I would turn the invitation down. However, I saw their offer as an opportunity for Heshy and I to work together. So, I agreed to perform there but only if I could share the stage with Heshy, with me being the MC hosting the event, performing a little time on stage, and then introducing him. The booker agreed in principle.
On Aug. 19, I called Heshy to invite him to do the show with me, but I went into voice mail, and I left a voice message asking him to call me back. I then followed that up the same day by sending to him an email to his email address telling him about the show and asking him to contact me so that we could discuss it.
My feeling at the time was that if he didn’t receive the voice mail, he surely received the email. And, if he didn’t see the email, he surely heard the voice mail. I didn’t bother writing to him on Facebook, because he told me on the phone one night that I should always write to his email account instead.
Whatever. It is now more than two months later, and he still has not contacted me. Sukkos came and went already, and our show would have been held during the last week of September. Had he contacted me in a timely fashion, we could have accepted the offer, worked out the contracts, and prepared our show. But, instead, he left me holding the bag, forced to turn down the entire gig, making me look like an absolute fool.
It is unprofessional for a comedian to not return emails and calls for a potential gig. If Heshy is too swamped by emails and calls from his friends and fans, then he needs to create a way for people in the entertainment industry who want to book him for shows to contact him. Otherwise, he has no one but himself to blame when he doesn’t get booked and has no money. I had a gig that would’ve put money in his pocket, and when he posted on his Facebook that he was starting a fundraiser for himself, and that people should contribute money to him to help him buy a car, I immediately responded to his Facebook status with a comment saying that if he would just call me back, I had a way for him to make money. But, he ignored that as well.
So, he lost.
Rabbs doesn’t tolerate being ignored. I can withstand a lot of criticism, but one thing I can’t put up with is when people don’t respond to me. That applies to everyone, not just Heshy. There are a few individuals that likewise ignored my emails, messages, or calls, and I gave them all until Yom Kippur to contact me. On the day after Yom Kippur, Sept. 19, I deleted from my Facebook friend list those that had still not contacted me, Heshy included.
If you know someone that used to be on my friend list, and suddenly they were deleted, chances are they were part of the group that got axed during the Sept. 19 massacre.
Heshy wrote that “de-friending one of your facebook friends is seen as a real back stabbing thing to some people”. I strongly disagree with those people, and I would counter by saying that to me, the real back stabbing thing to do is to ignore someone. ?”
Honestly, I have a terrible time getting back to folks as well. To me, the rant above sounds a lot like a pouting child, “he was so MEAN to me!” It doesn’t sound like anyone was “ignored;” it sounds like Heshy sucks at gett back to people, and rather than brushing it off and saying something like, “Oh well. That sucks. But it’s not like this gig was life or death. Meh” you get “I’m gonna go be cool, and we can’t hang out anymore SO THERE.”
Whatever, man.
Wow sounds like the douchebag and tool that is Rabbs. This guy is really full of himself if those are his reasons. Especially if he’s one of those people who “can’t stand being ignored” that should be very telling.
This guy is more wacked out of his kelim than his other egually non-funny rants let on. Forget about him hesh, youre better off without him
“Rabbs doesn’t tolerate being ignored” …”Sept. 19 massacre” SERIOUSLY?!
As much as it sucks when ANYONE de-friends you on FB and as much as it seems you’ve lost out on a gig by not being responsive (or responsive enough, rather) and that’s always a bad thing n you need a better system… still, in light of this insanity, especially the parts I’ve highlighted that just reek of an inflated sense of self importance, you are clearly better off. Don’t give it another thought.
you need separate phone numbers or email accounts for junk/trivialities and for important or work-related messages and don’t give your work address to all-and-sundry then you won’t miss important messages.
…Maybe he thinks you are gay?
If Leshon HaRa’ wasn’t a concern you two could make the first Jewish diss songs.
Seriously… NOBODY emails and calls me, and the few times they do email or call, they’re lucky if I even respond 25% of the time. Some of us are good at replies, some of us aren’t.
Heshy, I noticed you change your pic all the time. What’s with the Brokeback one up now?
Also, I sent you an email from my rocketmail account. Did you get it?
Not that anyone asked for my opinion but i think both of you are out of line. Hesh, you need to be more professional, and friendly. Rabbs, that post was too angry, Heshy did not come at you with anything like that level of anger. Hesh you need a private email and a facebook account under a pseudonym for your real friends and family, youre a celebrity now.
If someone messages you and you don’t have time to respond to them but you can post who wants to eat you for lunch then you have no right being on the dang rabi’s friend list. He’s busy doing adoni’s work and took the time to message you. You even took the time to wright this whole ignorant intimate message to a bunch of strangers and still didn’t respond to your rabi. You are not a friend
Thank you for your blog article.Truly thank you! Really Great.