Tuesday 10 November 2009

Pointless Facebook friends requests

Another day, another pointless friends request on Facebook from someone I haven't spoken to since I was probably 10 years old. Someone who in no shape or form I would have considered a friend. Why are they bothering?

This is one thing that annoys me about Facebook. People who try to add you as a friend just for the sake of boosting their numbers. In most cases you haven't spoken to them in years and you were barely friends with them in the first place.

For me it's usually people I went to school with, or from the same area I grew up in. I log onto my hotmail account somedays to see an email telling me that such and such a person has added me as their friend. Always a name I've completely forgotten, and normally someone I'm not remotely interested in hearing about.

My first reaction is simply to groan, before saying to myself:

If we weren't friends 20 years ago, we're not friends now!

I have a growing list of people who have tried to add me, who I refuse to confirm as a friend. I just don't quite have the guts to press the ignore button. One person tried to add me on two occasions!

Why? Leave me alone!

For a lot of these people there's no reason why they should even want to add me. It's all just a pointless waste of time. Secondly some of my very best friends aren't even on Facebook. It's a joke to not have them on my profile, but instead to have people I last spoke to back in 1991!

One thing that might persuade me to add such people is if rather then just sending a friends request, they actually took the time and effort to write a proper message. Just something saying 'hi, how are you, how's your life going'

One kid I went to school with did this, and I really appreciated it. We exchanged a few emails and it was good to catch up. That's how it should be done.

For those of you thinking I'm being a killjoy, I'm not. I do like Facebook, and earlier this year I was fortunate enough to get back in touch with one of my closet childhood friends.

This was someone I hadn't seen in over ten years. We now meet up regularly when I travel home to stay with my parents and I know we're never going to lose touch again.

Before the internet and the growth of social networking sites, you met people throughout your life. People would come and go, before being lost in you own personal history. Now everyone you've ever crossed paths with is only a few mouse clicks away from getting back in contact with you.

Just move on. I don't need to have everyone from school or everyone I've ever worked with on my Facebook page, and a lot of these people certainly don't need me.

1 comment:

  1. Ha ha ha! I think people use facebook as a tool for different things e.g. 1)showing off their photo's 2)genuine keeping in touch with friends/family or 3)to add any many strangers to show how popular they are. When people have over 500+ I just think 'whatever' but I have to admit that I've been guilty of hiding from facebook friends when I've seen them in town lol but I could at least stop and have a conversation if I really wanted to.
    Lauren

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