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How to Lose Facebook Friends the Fastest

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NICHOLAS KAMM / AFP / Getty Images

Now that Facebook has been joined by about one in every 13 people on the planet, it’s attracting the attention of the academy. A study out of the University of Colorado, Denver has studied the top reasons for unfriending. Not, presumably, in an effort to increase world peace, but to see what behavior annoys the kind of friends you only have in cyberspace.Turns out, drumroll please, it’s not that different from real life. You know how you never want to sit next that girl who can only talk about the same rock star? On Facebook, going on and on about the same subject turns people away the most. (More on Time.com: ‘Heartbrake’: How Rejection Literally Stops Your Heart)

After that it’s talking about politics and religion. Posting vulgar or racist comments on your page comes in third. Of course, having a falling out with your friend in real life can lead to unfriending, but in this survey many more people were unfriended for what they did online than offline.

“Researchers spend a lot of time examining how people form friendships online but little is known about how these relationships end,” said the author’s study Christopher Sibona, a PhD student at Denver’s Business School, who used Twitter to survey more than 1500 Facebook members. (More on Time.com: Photos: Inside Facebook Headquarters)

So let’s see: talking too much about the same thing, talking about politics or religion or being overly crude—yep, you can get unfriended for the exact same reasons that you can get a radio show.

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