The Husbands & Wives Problem

Okay, so say you’ve got yourself a shiny new Google+ invite. And suppose you’ve got a buddy – we’ll call him Bill. Bill is a good friend, so you stick him in the “Friends” circle or the “Close Friends” circle or the “Epic Bros” circle…whatever. Now suppose Bill is married – to Mrs. Bill, of course. Maybe you’re not as close with Mrs. Bill and she gets relegated to the “Just Friends” circle, or “Acquaintances” (eww). Hell, maybe you just plain dislike Mrs. Bill and you drop her into the “Pack Sand” circle. Okay.

So now, it’s a Thursday and you post something-or-other that you think your friends would like to see. Mr. and Mrs. Bill are taking turns on their shared laptop “being social”, and Mrs. Bill sees that – *gasp!* – you’ve posted something to a circle that Bill can see but that Mrs. Bill cannot! What does it mean? Is she not as good a friend as Bill? Has she not been there at numerous social occasions with Bill and done/said the proper things to elevate her into the same circle(s) as him? This is circle discrimination! Outrageous!

Now, I am fortunate enough to have a group of friends who chose not to marry (wo)men that I would put in the aforementioned Pack Sand circle (if you are one of my married friends re-read that bit, breath easy, and rest assured that you will end up properly circled), but the problem is more general than that. I’ll grant that having subsets of folks that you do/don’t want to see particular things makes a ton of sense, particularly in the context of friend lists that might contain family or coworkers (specifically, one’s management). However, it seems that it might introduce a whole new set of problems when faced with a group of friends asking “Did you see what such-and-such posted?”…and the answer is “No, I did not.”