NOVEMBER 17 2019 – NATIONAL UNFRIEND DAY with Steven Chen

HAPPY NATIONAL UNFRIEND DAY! Join us as we celebrate kicking the squares out of your friends lists on social media! Today we're partying with funny dude and victim of unfriending Steven Chen (Twitter: @stevenchenshow / Instagram: gifilterfish)!! LET'S PARTY!!

Find Holiday Party online – Patreon: patreon,com/HOLIDAYPARTY Twitter: @HOLIDAYPARTYPOD / Instagram: HOLIDAYPARTYPODCAST / Facebook: @HOLIDAYPARTYPODCAST / HOLIDAYPARTYPODCAST.COM

Find Alyssa – Twitter: @alyssapants / Instagram: lettertalkpodcast / alyssapants.com

Find Disa – Twitter: @cinnamonenemy / Spotify: open.spotify.com/user/1243777842

SHOW NOTES

• History/Fun facts about the topic
  • Urban Dictionary defines unfriending as “removing a person from your list on a social network site, i.e. Facebook (292-87 thumbs up:down ratio)
    • “Compulsive people prune their friend list periodically, removing people that they no longer have contact with. More often though, unfriending is only done when a particular friend’s updates and self-promotions become so annoying that you can no longer stand hearing about them. Or you might unfriend someone when they piss you off, however, this is not very effective since the person who is unfriended is not notified that you unfriended them and you’d be better off to keep them as a friend and plot your revenge.”
  • Mirriam-Webster claims that the first use of ‘unfriend’ took place in 2003, which would put it in the same vocabulary time capsule as baby bump, binge-watch, clapback, flash mob, manscaping, muffin top, net neutrality, and SARS
    • However, according to a 2016 article from curiosity.com and a 2016 article from interestingliterature.com, the first known usage of a form of “unfriend” took place in the Middle English poem “Brut” by Layamon. “We sollen...slean houre onfreondes and wenden after Brenne.” Here, the noun form of unfriend delineates someone who is not a friend, but not necessarily an enemy either
      • This is apparently the same poem that provided us with the first presentation of the legends of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, as well as the first instance of the word ‘muggle’
    • It was in the 17th century that ‘unfriend’ was first used as a verb, by good ole Shakespeare in “Twelfth Night” (1601-02)
      • His use referred more to a passive losing of friends, rather than an active one, stating, “Being skilless in these parts; which to a stranger,/Unguided and unfriended, often prove/Rough and unhospitable.”
      • In King Lear (1606), he says, “Sir, will you, with those infirmities she owes--./Unfriended, new adopted to our hate.”
    • Regardless, the use of t