Over in this thread RickJay laments about a friend who wants him to install a tracking application on his cell phone.
This reminded me of people I barely know who have wanted to “friend” me on Facebook.
As I mentioned in RickJay’s thread, the sister of my son’s friend sent me a friend request. I’ve met her maybe two or three times and if it wasn’t for the somewhat distinct last name I wouldn’t have had a clue who she was.
I know what you’re thinking, but she lives in Texas and I’m pretty sure she’s a lesbian.
I get friend requests from dopers sometimes and I really wish that they would just add a message with the request saying who they are if only because that means I’m going to accept the request sooner.
I actually have a request languishing right now. I’ve been participating in the discussion on the facebook page for a podcast I like and one of the regular contributors there sent me a friend request. That’s weird and makes me uncomfortable. He’s assumed too much about our relationship.
Haha, I have one of those too. A friend of a friend sent a friend request and I’m too chicken to decline the request so I’ve just been ignoring it - for about 2 years.
A while back, I reconnected on FB with a guy I was close to growing up. We hadn’t seen each other in over 20 years. It was nice to connect with him. We exchange a few messages about baseball here and there and play the odd game of Words with Friends. It’s pleasant, but it’s not like we’re really tight at this point.
One day his 18-year-old son sent me a friend request. I have never met the son. I figure the son just connects with people willy-nilly and saw me commenting on one of his dad’s posts, so hey let’s be friends! I don’t want to decline it, so like **Inner Stickler **and FloatyGimpy, I’m just bravely ignoring it. I probably over-think these things.
Then, of course, I get the occasional request from people who were complete pricks to me in high school. Yeah, let’s not relive old times. Maybe they’ve changed and are now swell people. I don’t care. I don’t want to have them in my life.
What I often do is unsubscribe from them and put them on the restricted list that facebook creates automatically. That way I see nothing they post and they can only see stuff that I have set to public.
My emotionally unwell sister, cut me entirely out of her life, with much drama, over some silly and trivial oversight on my part, an imagined sleight of the highest order. Whatever, I could care, ultimately. After a couple of years, I approached her, (note in her Xmas card), perhaps we could dialogue? Nada. Stone cold silence. I am not surprised, she’s a good grudge holder, I moved on. Still send a Xmas card. Suddenly a friend request.
I was hurt by her actions and thought hard before accepting. But I tried to set it, so she could not see my friends posts/contacts etc., (I’m so not facebook savvy, I’m not really certain I even got it right. But at least I tried!), as she still has both mental health issues and axes to grind with the whole world.
My younger brother. Who I have spoken to only a hand full of times in 20yrs, twice I hung up on him. He left a young family, 4 kids, no financial support, etc. I know blood is supposed to be thicker than water, but I felt for her and them, not him. I remain close to that family and never ever spoke to him, for like years. He was last here, after our older brother took his own life. Had dinner and left. Suddenly, a friend request on Facebook.
I’m still pondering that one.
I can’t help thinking, to myself; “Don’t look back - you’re not going that way!”
The weirdest I’ve gotten are requests from people from my high school graduating class (1976) whom I do not remember in the least. For most of them, I’ve had to look to see if we had any friends in common to figure out what the connection was. I think I still have a few hanging out there that, like FloatyGimpy, I’ve never acted on.
On the flip side, I tried to “friend” the person who wrote me a $300 bad check at a craft show last year. She has never responded.
I accept most friend requests; since I have a profile as an author, I like to promote, plus other writers try to friend me. So I have a lot of friends I’ve never met.
The weird ones are the requests from women who I don’t know, and who have maybe five friends. It’s obviously some sort of scam: when you set up a Facebook account, you make friends with people you know well and family, then people you know vaguely, and finally people you don’t know. If you have under 100 friends, you don’t contact total strangers.
Probably the strangest I have at the moment, as defined by my general rule to be named below, is the mother of my son’s GF. The mom and I have never met in real life.
My general rule is that I will friend a relative, a flesh and blood friend, or a Doper I have interacted with. There is a very short list of celebrities (4-5) that I’ve friended for purposes of following them, but I don’t consider that to be strange.
FWIW, I also try to keep my friend list around 150.
Significant others of coworkers and acquaintances. Always weird, as they’re rarely people I’ve ever met, just heard bitched about. I’ve accepted a few, and it sometimes gives me too much reading-between-the-lines insight into family problems. It’s sad to see one coworker’s wife posting things that she thinks her husband would like, posting pics of their newborn, tagging him in posts, generally trying to get his attention… all while he ignores her posts, openly talks about divorce at work, and just became FB friends with a new, single coworker that hangs around him a bit more than seems kosher.
Coworkers I’ve never met. I work third shift, never interacting with a good 80% of the other employees. I’m thinking they get a recommendation by FB since there’s often multiple friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend connections, and I wonder if they just send a request to everyone who’s recommended.
Local people whom I’ve never met, who apparently send friend requests because we both have an interest in math or philosophy. They’re not friends-of-friends, either, so I always wonder how they found my profile and decided I’d be someone to request. IUPUI students I never had a class with do this, too, usually if I have a degree in their field… guess they’re hoping for networking.
My ex-fiancee and her friends/family. We’re toxic together when we meet in person, and after a train-wreck of an attempt to have a friendly dinner together a couple of years ago, I broke off all contact, and blocked her on FB. After that, I received friend requests from pages representing her various pets. We eventually reconciled and agreed to be distant acquaintances. Right after we refriended each other, I immediately got pokes and friend requests from her parents, stepsister, friends, etc. The guy she cheated on me with and then dumped weeks after she left me and got in a relationship with him? Friend request. And any time one of us comments on the other’s posts, another round of requests comes through. I know her parent’s requests are because she really wishes we’d get back together (I made some benign comment about a dog picture the ex had posted, and got a message expressing excitement that the ex and I were “talking” and asking me and her to come over for dinner), but from her extended circle, it’s just weird.
My mother’s family is more than a little bit toxic. My mom has got her poop together, married to my dad for close to 50 years, no drama or affairs or addictions. This doesn’t sit too well with some of her sisters, particularly the ones that she has bailed out of crisis after crisis. One has a hatred for my mother so strong it seems to have poisoned my cousin’s attitude toward me.
I tried a few years ago to get my female cousins over for supper one day at Christmas time. Basically two of these cousins turned it into a chance to stand me up and make me look bad. I de-friended both of them shortly after that.
I keep getting friend requests from them, but I do not reply. Also one other cousin who I cut out of my life completely, 13 years ago, keeps sending me requests. I have turned down friend requests from Jane Doe, Jane A Doe, Jane-Ann Doe, Jane Ann Doe, J Ann Doe, JA Doe and every other permutation of her name, including using her mother’s maiden name, adding extra letters etc.
Sometimes when I see someones name and think about sending a friend request I wonder, “is this going to cause more problems than it is worth?”. A childhood friend of mine is a mutual friend many times over, but I also know his wife, and she is the jealous type. I will probably next see him at a funeral, and that saddens me, but why would I want him to have some weird grief from his wife over the girl he used to go camping with when he was 10 years old?
Weirdest current friend was from a guy whose name I vaugely knew from elementary school. Somehow thought it was the kid up the street a year younger than me, who delivered our newspaper. We comment on and like each other’s posts fairly often. One day I commented that his post brought me good news, after all the years he had delivered bad news. aka the local paper. He replied that he had never delivered newspapers. I realized later that he was the minion of one of my bullies, and used to shove snow in my face every recess in Grade 7. Too late now, but if I had remembered who he was I certainly would not have friended him, but he’s actually really a sort of friend now.
I got a friend request once from the assistant principal of my high school. (It has been nearly twenty years since I was in high school – it took me a while to remember who he even was.) There are certain former h.s. teachers that I would not be averse to friending, but the assistant principal? I’m not sure I ever talked to him when I wasn’t in trouble of some sort.
I just did. I got the usual hits for white pages, myspace, mylife, etc. So it’s not like she’s a remarkable person. And we’re not facebook friends, but I keep getting messages from her.