Unfriend beats sexting and tramp stamp as 2009 Word of the Year

You know you've done it.

To avoid being rude, you accept a Facebook friend request from an old high school classmate whom you have not seen or spoken to since graduation. Said "friend" inundates your news feed with numbingly dull details of life — watching Law & Order: SVU marathons, harvesting virtual FarmVille crops, fawning over their children who are either happy, sad or sick.

If this was a cocktail party conversation, you could excuse yourself to get another drink. In the cold world of social networking, it is time to unfriend.

Amid talk of sexting, zombie banks, death panels and tramp stamps, so prevalent was use of the term "unfriend" this year that the New Oxford American Dictionary chose the verb that doesn't sound like one as its 2009 Word of the Year.

"It has both currency and potential longevity," said Christine Lindberg, senior lexicographer for Oxford's U.S. dictionary program. "Unfriend has real lex-appeal."

Clever quote, loaded word. Erasing someone from your virtual existence is as easy as the click of a button. But the decision — and the potential fallout — can get complicated.

If you unfriend your pal's ex after a breakup, what happens when they get back together? If you dump someone in real life, should you ditch them on Facebook, too? Do you check a person's friend count to measure how likely he or she is to notice if it's minus one?

"Everybody's friending and unfriending, and if you meet somebody you have to go friend them afterward," said Caitlin Tighe, a 22-year-old University of South Florida student. "I was pretty obsessed with it for a while. It got to be too much to keep up with it all."

Donald Taylor, one of Facebook's 300 million active users, has a distant cousin in Colorado. They've never met, but he's family so Taylor indulged his friend request. Bad move. The cousin blathered on about childhood stories that had nothing to do with Taylor.

"He thinks I'm my brother," said Taylor, a 31-year-old Gulfport resident. "Why do I want you on my friends list?"

Taylor removed him. Six months later, the distant cousin sent another friend request and a message: Did you unfriend me?

Taylor played dumb and took the cousin back as a friend. As he endures more irrelevant stories, he wonders how much time must pass before he unfriends the cousin again.

"It's a whole new world," he said. "I'm not ready. I still send handwritten thank you cards."

Colleen Jenkins can be reached at cjenkins@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3337.