Facefacts
I’m probably not the first person this has ever happened to but I’ve had a few friend requests on a certain social networking site recently from people who, frankly, I don’t even really know.
I’m talking little brothers of friends or girlfriends I had when I was in high school. I’m not exactly over the hill but it’s a long time since I was in high school.
I figure I’m just going to let the requests sit in my notifications for a while before I eventually ignore them in a few months. But I’m stumped as to why they’d want to contact me, when I can’t ever recall having had a one-to-one conversation with them. Sure, I’ve heard of them. At a stretch, I’d say I even know them. But my own wife isn’t even in my friends list (there’s a reason) so I don’t see why I’d be listing people I haven’t spoken to in 20 years and even then, only to say “How’s your brother/sister?”.
Thing is, I keep thinking of them as the same 16-year-olds I remember them as but they’re in their 30s now as well, they’re grown up and mature and responsible and should have learned not how to ingratiate themselves and figured out a) who they are and b) what the definition of ‘friend’ is, and they’re contacting people they used to see at school/after-show-parties.
There are plenty of people I know, who pop up in my ‘perhaps you’ve heard of…’ box. Some of them, I know pretty well but I don’t click the ‘add as friend’ button because they’re not, y’know, friends. It’s not like I’m doing searches for all my sisters’ ex-boyfriends and poking them.
The concept of ‘friend’ is such a binary thing too, at least semantically. By not confirming the request, you’re saying “you’re not my friend” which connotes negative feelings, rather than the absence of them. It connotes hostility rather than indifference.
So while I’m adding relatives I don’t really talk to much, that’s different, cos even though we’re not close, I know them in a whole other sense to the way I know people who are only really friends of friends (and in these cases, I’m not even friends with the friends… you work it out). It’s like, if this were a site where you list all the books you’ve read, they’re listing the books they’ve seen in the bookstore, or read the blurb on the back cover; or all the books by an author of whose books they’ve read only one.
How do you tell someone ‘sorry, it’s nothing personal but we’re not friends’?
I think you are safe to ignore anything you want on Facebook. The people who are sending ill advised invitations are sending them out so far and so often they won’t remember to whom they have sent their invitations.
Similarly with any games or apps – just hit ignore.