Language purists criticize the use of nouns as verbs on social media, such as “friend” and “unfriend” on Facebook. New users often accept friend requests from strangers, but can easily unfriend them if necessary. Language evolves on its own, and even purists may need to adapt to social media language.
Language purists often deplore the way language seems to evolve. They point to the gleeful habit of the plebs of taking a perfectly useful noun and misusing it as a verb. Telling gossip becomes gossip, e-mail is delivered by e-mail, and friends are gained by making friends, at least on Facebook. As in real life, making too many friends too quickly can easily become overwhelming, but fear not: a friend who is made easily can become a non-friend just as easily.
As most new Facebook users know, almost immediately after creating an account, you will be inundated with requests from other Facebook users who want to be friends. By accepting the request, or the friendship, it means they have access to that particular sanctum sanctorum. They can send private messages, view photos and still make use of information. New Facebook users are a lot like nervous teenagers; relieved that someone wants to be friends, they initially accept all buyers, including those with completely unfamiliar names.
It doesn’t take long to figure out that the onslaught of new friends might include the stalker from a previous job, the obsessed kid who always had a booger up his nose in middle school, and that queen bee who told the whole school about a particularly embarrassing secret. There are likely to be several or several hundred highly determined resellers trying to sell everything from Viagra to cheap land in Florida, a “friend” who responds to every message board post with a lively comment, and many more who they are self-invited to the party. The solution is simple.
It’s easy to unfriend an unwanted friend. The best part is, there’s no need to inform this pesky creature that the friendship has been terminated. News feeds will not be sent, so they will no longer be able to reply. Their messages will be blocked, even if they don’t know it. Eventually, they will simply fade away.
Of course, the term unfriend is enough to annoy any language purist. When asked, they will quickly point out that friend is not a verb, and the prefix un, meaning “not,” cannot reasonably be attached to it. It must be stressed, however, that all languages are sprawling, uncontrollable things that evolve for their own reasons, and not even the best linguist can make them behave.
This is not an argument that language purists like to hear. With the proliferation of social media, however, they may have no choice but to join the crowd. After all, they’re welcome to unfriend all Facebooks who abuse the language to their heart’s content.
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