Guest Article: The Not-Friends List
November 5, 2008 46 Comments
Occasionally I get approached with an article idea that, for whatever reason, I adamantly refuse to touch. Sure I’ll write about all sorts of Halo pr0n, but believe it or not I do have my boundaries and today’s subject matter crosses them. I’ll offend the hell out of people with inappropriate adult subjects and horrifically foul language but hurt their feelings? Never. That is why I left the subject of “The Not-Friends List” to someone else. I have a strong feeling many of you will relate to this piece that is being brought to you courtesy of an extremely straightforward and blunt gamer known in the gaming world as Tortacular. Enjoy reading the article and as always, feel free to share your own experiences with this rather disturbing phenomenon in the comments.
The other day I was chatting with angel and I was talking to her about an idea I had. It wasn’t an idea about putting pink glitter on things or Halo pr0n, but she pretended it was interesting anyway. I appreciated that. That’s what real friends do.
My idea was about Not-Friends. We’ve all got those people on our friends lists. The people that somehow got on there even though we don’t play with them and even though we don’t want to play with them. We were tricked or backed into a corner and now there they are, taking up one of the 100 valuable slots on Xbox Live that signify whom you enjoy spending your gaming time with.
Okay, so one spot isn’t so bad right? You still have 99 other people you like playing with. Except it doesn’t stop at one. It doesn’t stop at two. And it doesn’t stop at ten. I’m talking about the result of friends list politics, the Not-Friend. Suddenly you’ve got a dozen (or few dozen) people on your friends list that you actually don’t want to see. You cringe when you see them log on. You find yourself praying they won’t see you’re online and start spamming you with invites. You might end up setting yourself to “Appear Offline” and wandering the cold streets of Lone Wolves rather than play with these unattractive options. Or perhaps you grit your teeth and accept the invites, only to regret your decision later.
This phenomenon can affect anyone whether you’re an XBL celebrity or just an average Joe trying to find a team for Squad Battle. These Not-Friends fall into several categories that I’ll break down for you below.
The Real Life Not-Friend: This one is pretty straight forward. We all have real life friends who love themselves some Xbox Live gaming. Unfortunately, they’re not always quite as fun to be around online as they are in person. They’re the guy suddenly teabagging somebody they just killed while screaming “GET RAPED NOOB!” into their headset… even though it’s ranked and the other team can’t hear them. I refer you to the Penny Arcade Internet Fuckwad Theory. Then you’re left with the awkward problem of either dodging someone whom you’re good friends with when you’re online or coming out and telling them they’re an asshole. Not an easy choice to make I assure you, but eventually you must choose between your friend and your sanity.
The Work/School Not-Friend: Someone at the office or at school overhears you mention Halo in a conversation. You didn’t really know this person beforehand so maybe you’ve made a new friend. Think again. Throwing this kind of wildcard into the deck can result in the ruination of your Xbox Live Experience. This person could have no idea what they’re doing. They could be a total jerk. Do you really want to play with the guy who will accidentally shoot you with the rockets, or the guy who will betray you for the sniper rifle? I didn’t think so. But what happens if this guy is your boss, or a friend of your boss? Pray for the third kind of Work/School Not-Friend, the one that never actually gets online.
The Favor Not-Friend: You need something. You’re desperate. Someone helps you out (whether for honorable or dishonorable reasons) and then you get that ill-fated “Hey I sent you a friend request” message. Whoops. Though this person might have helped you out explaining how skulls work or who would have been who’s daddy, they are in fact highly annoying on a personal level. You are happy to tout them as a great person but not so happy to end up on their team. Maybe they chatter nonstop about things completely unrelated to the game they’re in. Maybe they constantly bitch and moan about that guy that just killed them with the sword. Do you dare to cut them loose and feel their emo-laced wrath?
The Friend of a Friend Not-Friend: This one can be trouble. A good friend of yours brings their buddy in and they seem to be having a great time, but all you want to do is murder one (or both) of them and turn off your 360. Maybe they’re just plain annoying. Maybe they’re an out and out jerk. Worst case scenario, they reveal your friend to also be a jerk. Then you’ve got a whole new level of problems. This Friend of a Friend Not-Friend ends up on your list because they sent you a request right after they got in the room. Your friend just spent the last five minutes telling you how cool and fun their buddy was, so why wouldn’t you add them? Now you’re fucked.
The Community Not-Friend: You’re a member of one of the dozens and dozens of great gaming communities out there. Maybe you’re new, maybe you’re not. Whatever the situation you end up adding someone because they’re interesting or funny on the forums. Maybe you share an interest in Grifball or Team Slayer. Or maybe they’re popular and you just end up in rooms with them a lot. Only it turns out you don’t like them very much. Now you face the dilemma of removing them without getting flamed later. Enjoy.
The Mutual Not-Friend: An extremely rare situation. You don’t like this person, and they don’t like you. Most likely there is a tie to something larger here whether it’s a job, a community or perhaps family. It does happen every once in a while but thankfully since neither of you give a crap, there’s no reason for conflict. Pistols (not that “broken” Halo 3 kind either) at dawn can solve this one. Eventually one of you will tire of seeing the other on their list and “accidentally” remove them. Darn.
The Not-Friend phenomenon is hardly exclusive to gaming. It has wormed its way into every corner of life. The internet had been one of the last bastions. A place where you could just plain old not like somebody and not have to worry about it. Now even Xbox Live has fallen before the mighty nature of humans. You can no longer hide behind the dashboard of your warthog or the scope of your sniper rifle. Often times people will just feel it’s easier if they go along to get along. Maybe if they wait long enough, the RRoD will make their decision for them. This is a dark time for gaming, to be sure.
I’m here to say no. I’m here to tell you not to do this. Don’t embrace the Not-Friends. You don’t like them anyway! Purge your friends list of such people, and ignore the myriad of messages you get. You will feel cleansed, you will feel free, and most of all your friends list will actually be full of friends!
-by Tortacular
Wow, you know, I was just thinking about how I should really weed out my friend’s list… and this just gave me the push to do it. Thanks, Tortacular.
All too true.
I remember my first “Great Purge”. It felt so good. A friends list of maybe 65 was cut down to around 25.
Excellent article. Im sure there are a lot of people reading this and thinking to themselves…”Dear God!! I’M a ‘Not-Friend’!”
Yes…yes you are and you would do well to shape up or suffer the wrath of the “X” button.
:D
Too true. I’m going on a friend list extermination spree right now.
We humans are a funny species aren’t we? :)
Tort’s right.
I’ve got some friends like that. Most of ‘em are the Favor Not-Friends.
this is a great article, ive also had the you cant add anymore friends message, and when i decided to delete a few people, i ended up with only a good 30ish i actually play with more that once every two weeks. also, i can be an ass sometimes, so im sure im someones not-friend. something about team objective games when the teammates are playing slayer instead just brings out the jackass in me.
hmmmm thats an interesting list. a good interesting listt.
i say angel should let him get the yellow box and font and stuffs if he edits this!!!
Nice article, I like it a lot and sadly a lot of it is true.
You missed one!!!!
I don’t know what it’s name would be… it’s someone who you’ve been friends with online for a long time and suddenly realize that they don’t know what they are doing and often wander off mid-game to play by (with) themselves…
I’ll call it the “Long time not-friend”
this has convinced me to clean up my friends list :]
I have a special one on my list:
The real life friend who sucks -
I went to college with the guy, and we’re incredibly close friends…but he’s AWFUL at Halo. I don’t mean to say i refuse to play with people with lower ranks, I’m not a jerk but when he goes -20 every single game and does nothing but complain and whine about “dude, i swear my head shots aren’t registering” or the classic “WTF i just meleed that guy like 3 times in the back”, it gets to be a little annoying when every post game lobby convo turns a hate-fest with an enemy team we should’ve completely steam-rolled. I feel bad not inviting him to my games because we’re such good friends, but he’s so friggin BAD!
Damnit Tort, you coulda just told me you hated me.
Glad I could spurn some of you to dumping those Not-Friends off your list ;)
Sorry Stu, I didn’t know how to tell you.
*sigh*
I’m afraid the majority of people on my Friends List are Not-Friends. Heck, a lot of them are only there because they’ve offered to help me get that damn Annual Achievement, yet THEY’RE NEVER AROUND WHEN I NEED THEM.
I might actually have to *shudder* recruit from B.net… 6_6
I can has friend request?
I’ve already had a round of non-friend purging when my Friend list got full. Looks like it’s time for round 2.
I have one more.
The non-existent non-friend.
This friend you got along with at one point or another. Maybe you teamed up after meeting randomly in team doubles and played all night. Maybe you met them in team slayer and they joined your 3 man team. But after that one time you never saw them again. They are just a used up slot in the long list of friends.
I have alot of those. I don’t even know anymore where I met most of my non-existent friends.
The missing in action friend.
When I was in the Navy, I’d meet people and they move quite often, now I have half my friends list full of people in Japan, Korea, or out out to sea half the year. So as far as I can tell, they are NEVER online, despite that Live tells me they just logged off a few hours ago. They are good friends, WHEN I can play with them.
I had a friend of a friend not-friend. My friend actually warned me about this person, but said that he keeps him on his friends list because he’s a reasonably good Halo 3 player (as long as you ignore a lot of the things he says).
I didn’t want to add him as a friend. I even tried to make it clear that I found his non-game-related comments offensive and politely give him the hint. He didn’t send me a friend request right away, but a day later he did. Like a sucker, I accepted. (He was actually pretty food at Halo 3.)
A few days after that, I noticed a name I didn’t recognize on my friends list. I figured out that it was this same annoying non-friend.
(Drum roll please, here comes the punch-line.)
His new gamertag and the bio he had set was an offer of money in exchange for the murder of one of the US presidential candidates. (Feel free to use your imagination as to which one and exactly how the incitement to political assassination was phrased.) As a fine upstanding citizen of the Xbox Live community, I reported him for a violation of the terms of service. A few days later, he was completely gone from my friends list, and the friend I met him through couldn’t find him either. I’m assuming his account was banned (though I don’t know for certain).
I guess that’s one way to purge a not-friend.
Er, he was pretty good at Halo 3, that is. (Thanks a lot, spell check!)
lolz, pretty food…..
Now I have an excuse to get rid of angel and Tort in one blow!
;)
Noooo! I’m a not-friend!
It’s so hard, though, when there are so many other great games to play and most of your friends are still playing Halo. Is it my fault that Fable and Fallout will make me disappear for weeks on end? And when I do play Halo when ten other friends are on they’re in a bunch of different parties! And they all send me requests! Oh crap!
I guess I’ll always be a bit of a not-friend to someone. I’m so sad now. (sniff)
I think at one point or another, everyone is somebody’s not-friend. Even if you don’t know it.
Wait what, I come home and find my friends list empty! Darn you Tort. ;)
HAHA! Great article, Tortacular! As a moderator on a very prominent Xbox 360 forum, I have the “community not-friend” problem quite often!
I also have experienced just about every other kind of not-friend that you described. I enjoyed this well-thought out article on a seemingly silly subject.
My MO is: delete everyone not-friend you have, and if anyone gets offended or re-invites you to be a friend, re-add them. 99% of the people you delete prob won’t even notice that you did it.
whew! relieved to still see tort on my friends list… for now. :)
Xor1an that is awesome. High five for YOU! :D
Hmm…I have a list to also purge…
M2AF: I don’t like you.
100 slots up for grabs people!
i don’t have any friends… not really i have like 20, only ever play with like 5 though. like my cousin who got rrod’d and he’s still on my friends list. oh, and i have one really good real-friend who really sucks at Halo too, i convinced him to just stop playing all together. it’s better this way… :-)
I’m here to say no. I’m here to tell you not to do this. Don’t embrace the Not-Friends. You don’t like them anyway! Purge your friends list of such people, and ignore the myriad of messages you get. You will feel cleansed, you will feel free, and most of all your friends list will actually be full of friends!
Here’s something I’ve considered for a while, but I’ve had to weigh it against the friend request and message spamming that occurs when my friends list is not full… Gah!
Care to send some TTL Folk/Allies to me? ;)
I don’t see how the article would hurt feelings (but then, I tend to be less emotional and more practical, so…). The only people I have on my friends list are people I know in real life that I consider friends (well, I think there’s about 5 of them that I don’t actually know, that are regulars players with others on my friends list).
I’m a nice guy. I’m friendly and more than willing to offer help or whatever. But there’s only a handful or 3 of people that I consider friends. I don’t see how that’s harsh or would hurt a person’s feelings.
You know, there’s like 30 people on my friends list, and of them about 4 to 9 are on at any given time, and it seems like it’s the same 10 or so people who play constantly, while the others play once in a blue moon and maybe play a game I’m looking to play… hell, back in the day it was easy. The only game people played was Halo 2… and that was pretty much it. Now it seems like lots of games have multiplayer components worth playing or single player games that you just can’t put down, even when your friends are on.
I really need to clean out my list. It’s full of people I don’t know, annoying people, and people I really don’t like anymore…. yeah, I’m doing that now.
Excellent article Tortacular! And it does give me that initiative to clean out my XBL friends list… come to think of it…my PSN friends list as well :P
Great. I used to have 99 people on my FL.
I now have 14.
Thanks, Tort.
I’ve been pondering this for a while… and you may have pushed me over the edge, Tort.
Either that, or I’m about to be one VERY sad Panda. ;)
Maybe the New Xbox Experience will incorporate an acquaintence list for those we don’t quite feel comfortable with on our firends list.
I appreciated this tort. Well written and obviously well thought out. And you look like the asshole while angel gets off scotch free again. :)
I see some common ground with facebook here and friends list that it has, I find that I’m always deleted people because if really wanted to be there friend I would chatting with them on a regular basis. But the reality is you lose some gain some, with XBL on the other hand it’s simple with me you send a request we play for couple of weeks I don’t hear from in 30 days your gone.
Just to finish this off XBL should seriously get a mutual friends going it would make life easier for me and hundred thousand gamers out there.
Success!! ;)
Thanks Tort.. now i’m going to go cut myself.
I … see … how it is….. <.<
It’s not your fault, I have Venus Envy.
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nice one Tort, see you online……or will I ??
I went on a purge of my XBL friends list the other day. It felt good. Now I can see all the people i actually enjoy playing with without having to scroll down much at all :). There were some people who I honestly didn’t have a clue who they were or how they got onto my friends list.