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I know being friends in social media don't equate to real friends in life. However I noticed a trend. Several people I hangout with on a regular basis unfriended me on Facebook. I can't help but wonder why. I still see them regularly. In fact one of them was the one who took the picture I use for my profile. I don't use my real last name and was wondering if my profile is coming off spammy? We certainly have used Facebook e.g. chat messages and invited each other to events. I guess now days there's nothing you can do with a non-friend as you could with a friend on Facebook.

What's the best way to casually approach this with out making the situation awkward and allowing them to be honest?

I'm thinking "hey I noticed we're not friends on Facebook anymore, did you realize we got unfriended?"

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  • Is there any chance you have some photo with your friends to upload, or recently was there any photo that you might need to tag them in?
    – anki
    Oct 14, 2019 at 8:08
  • @ankii maybe, though I don't think they would act passive aggressive like this. I started a new policy where I don't upload pictures unless each person who is in the picture tells me they like it. Oct 14, 2019 at 11:39
  • I wonder why my comment was deleted...it was a legitimate question. Can you please confirm they have actually unfriended you and not just disabled their facebook account?
    – jesse_b
    Oct 26, 2019 at 13:14

1 Answer 1

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I have a similar story - my father's phone number disappeared from my contacts list, on my phone.

I could have asked as you mentioned, cornering him:

Why did you delete the contact? You know it is useless, because I know the phone number by heart, anyway!

Instead, I gave him the liberty of answer and the chance to save face:

I just noticed that your phone number disappeared from my phone. Did you use my phone for anything? Maybe deleted it by mistake?

He denied, and we both blamed the phone for forgetting one number. I added it again manually, and that was it.


In your case I would think of:

I see that we are no longer friends on FB. Do you know anything about it? Or maybe their software just made a mistake?

According to the answer, you might want to actually go ahead and send the friend request again.


Regardless of how you ask, there is never a guarantee that you will not receive a lie as an answer. It will only help you not anger your friend - as you said, by "cornering" him.

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  • Why do you bring up "lying"? Of course the whole point of a lie is you don't know when a person is doing it. Oct 17, 2019 at 10:25
  • Because what I mentioned cannot guarantee the truthfulness of the information. It maximizes the chance to get an answer, and the chance to still remain on good terms with the person, but the truthfulness is not a guarantee. The whole point of a lie is actually to hide the truth, regardless of the lie being detected or not.
    – virolino
    Oct 17, 2019 at 10:30
  • I’m lost here. Was it your number that disappeared from your father’s phone or the other way around? The way you’ve written it now doesn’t make sense to me.
    – Neeku
    Oct 25, 2019 at 23:34
  • @Neeku: please indicate the sentence(s) which create the confusion, so I can review them.
    – virolino
    Oct 26, 2019 at 8:37

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