On (NOT) collecting friends on facebook
December 16th, 2008 • Social Media
My biggest pet peeve is coming into my inbox with friend requests from names I don’t recognize AT ALL.
This post has been a long time in the coming. I am a little pissed off right now because I am struggling with handling the facebook conundrum. Facebook has unfortunately liquidated the meaning / definition of “friend.” I still view Facebook as a personal domain. While, thankfully, I have the option to select and adjust privacy settings per user, it still takes a certain level of personal comfort and familiarity for me to be bold enough to request someone’s friendship and for me to accept someone’s friend request.
Everytime I recieve a friend request that I don’t recognize, I message back and ask : Do I know you. Today, perhaps, I just tipped over my threshold and the response I recieved really really pissed me off. I received a notification on Twitter last night about this person following me. I didn’t find their Twitter feed interesting – so I didn’t follow them back. Then this afternoon, I received a friend request from them. I thought that perhaps I might have met the person and was blanking on the name/ face so as I always do, I asked them: Do I know you. And here’s the response I received.
(Redacted) : followed u on twitter
My response: Not to be rude – but following me on Twitter is not the same as being my friend on Facebook. Please be mindful of people’s privacy and if you want to friend someone, at the very least – write a note explaining why or the association. You can network with me on linkedin or twitter if you like. I don’t know you well enough to friend you here.
WOW. That just annoyed me.
My goal with being on Facebook is not to collect friends, but to strengthen my already existing social relationships. Unfortnately there are no rules to friending people and making new friends – its just that each of us has a different agenda that should be respected, irrespective of what it might be. And the reason why I invest my time asking, ‘Do I know you’ every single time I recieve a friend request from a stranger is because I have been very glad of the times I have accepted a relative stranger into my friend fold simply because they took the time to answer my question sincerely and honestly. Thats the kind of people I want to enrich my life with – not the ones who think sending me a half-assed phrase as a reason to be my friend.
Maybe I have a very high opinion of myself, maybe every sentence here is hypocritical, but I stand by it. I have not yet sent a TOTAL stranger a friend request – and if and when I do – I guarantee you I will make a strong case of why I should be their friend.
7 Responses (Add Your Comment)
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I have been using facebook since my sophomore year of college in 2004 so I am well-aware of the transformations the site has undergone. The dilemma over accepting those whom you do not know very well (or at all, as the case may be) as your “friends” has existed from the beginning. The least that facebook can do is to assist the users in figuring out whether and how well they know the senders of the friend request: displaying the commonalities in terms of friends, groups, networks, employers, etc. Hopefully facebook will continue to streamline this process to spare us of frustrations and indecisions.
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My apologies for annoying you so much.
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Right you are about the annoyance. But there are people who just want to connect and don’t always know how to express why I guess. Not that that’s reason enough to accept their Friend requests. But I’m glad we connected – I don’t think we were ever strangers.
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Ideasmith – if people cannot offer an explanation for their Friend requests (i.e. how they have become acquainted with or come to know you), then I do not see any reason for you to accept the requests. Like those annoying networkers bent on passing their business cards to anyone within their reach at social events, people with no intent to establish meaningful connection are not worth your attention.
I don’t know if some people like to feel popular by flaunting the number of friends they have on facebook. They either do not understand that it is the density, not the volume of connections they have that reflects their social relationship, or possess some ulterior motive with their indiscriminate “friending.”