When thinking about relationships and friendships, I remember the wise words of elementary school teachers everywhere—“strangers are friends you’ve yet to meet.” But as I sit in class and scan through the Facebook profiles of my 1,043 closest friends, I realize that strangers are people that I have already friended, but will never meet. 

And that brings me to this year’s word… “unfriend.” 

This week, the New Oxford American Dictionary unveiled its choice for word of the year: “Unfriend.” (If you’re interested, other finalists include “hashtag,” “sexting,” “funemployed” and “teabagger.”)

Thanks to Facebook and other tools of social media, friendship is just a click away, and conversely, so is unfriendship. 

So if Facebook friendships are conceived so easily, does that mean that relationships have become so fleeting and insubstantial that they can be erased with the click of a button? Does the Oxford Dictionary’s lending of credibility to Facebook-speak prove once and for all that social media has numbed us to the value of legitimate human connections?

I cautiously say no. Admittedly the nature of friendship has certainly evolved, but I think for the better. When you can have up to 5,000 friends (according to Facebook), the concept of a “friend” becomes less meaningful. With the term no longer descriptively useful, society has adopted new, albeit sophomoric, terminologies to help differentiate the nature of relationships—“frienemies,” “frienefits” and “bromances” for example. This suggests to me that society can adapt without the word “friend” in our lexicon. 

So if we can let go of the word “friend” as a meaningful indicator of anything, or at least suspend our concern over syntax for a moment, I think we will discover the unique value of social media in enriching human relationships as opposed to obliterating them. 

The last couple decades of media growth have demonstrated that the more media there are, the more enriching are our experiences. Think about your favorite TV show or movie. Watching “Mad Men,” for example, as it’s broadcast live on Sunday nights is a fun experience, but watching “Mad Men” without commercials (thanks to Tivo or Time Warner Cable as is the case in Durham), then watching it again, tweeting about it, Gchatting with friends and digesting other people’s commentary makes for an exponentially better experience.

The same goes for more direct social media. Having dinner with a buddy is usually a good time, but returning from dinner to post interesting links on your friend’s wall about the global warming issues you debated over dinner, tagging him in pictures from the evening and tweeting about the awkward waiter you guys had at Mt. Fuji, all make for a more rewarding friendship.

Admittedly, you might engage on that level of exchange with only a small percent of your “friends,” nonetheless, Facebook enables you to communicate in a limitless number of ways. Keep in mind though that Facebook is just a delivery technology. The desire to share, whether it is accomplishments or feelings, trivial or dire­—human beings want to engage with their surroundings—that’s why we came out of the cave. 

Facebook enables people to fulfill this basic human need to share and to relate to one another. Similarly, Twitter is a platform that enables people to express themselves, although more concisely.

I know, however, that there are a great many Twitter-haters out there who seem to have an irrational fear of Twitter. You can take some comfort knowing that in the somewhat near to distant future, Twitter will become obsolete, I promise.  

Twitter, like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, minidiscs, cassette players, DVD players, newspapers, etc. are all delivery technologies. Mediums are different. Media are systems for communicating, language for example, images, movement, etc. Delivery technologies become outdated and get replaced, mediums, on the other hand, endure and evolve. 

The word “friend,” I am coming to believe, is a delivery mechanism of sorts. It was once a vehicle that encapsulated a set of commonly accepted emotions, responsibilities and rewards. Now, the word “friend” has been rendered meaningless by its infinite array of understandings, its casual deployment and sheer overuse (much like the word “seriously”). 

So to mitigate confusion (and to encourage people to come up with more creative titles for their relationships like “bromance”), I hereby am unfriending the word “friend.” And that is this year’s word. 

Steffi Decker is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Wednesday.