My Facebook Form Letter
Dear [most Facebook friend requests I receive],
I have two rules for accepting friend requests. I must know them offline, or they must show a photo of themselves on their profile. The reason for these rules is that otherwise I couldn't keep it straight about who they are, where I know them from, or anything else.
For instance, because you meet neither of these criteria, I do not remember ever interacting with you, at least under your real name. Thank you for your friend request, but I will decline.
-Matt
Comments
amanda_lodden on May. 17, 2009 4:05 PM
Hmm. I suppose that means I should find a passably decent photo of myself, doesn't it?
gothicsquish on May. 17, 2009 4:34 PM
sounds good. I've added a few people that at first i thought I knew because of the mutual friends thing only to realize i hadn't ever meet the person. (i love it when they claim they've meet me recently via the mutual friends that I haven't seen in months... lol)
its a good policy you've got and I might just have to steal it.
grypeseye on May. 29, 2009 10:16 PM
Looks like you use a different criteria when dealing with LiveJournal friend requests.
matt-arnold on May. 29, 2009 10:30 PM
I have been on LJ for years before joining Facebook, and my friending was haphazard rather than systematic. By and large, I have successfully distinguished LJ users through the content of their blogs. In both places, the key is to detect how rewarding each site is to me when I use different friending criteria. I de-friend people if I find I am consistenly uninterested in their blog posts, with little regard for whether I know who they are or not. In some cases, if they don't post, I simply forget that I friended them.
For me, Facebook provides no interesting content at all. Rather for me it is good as a directory of people. When I meet someone at a party, and they seem to have come with person X, I look through person X's Facebook friends list to see if they have a directory listing so I can learn more about that person. Also Facebook is good for party invites and other alerts. So I need to keep it very tightly connected between profile and true identity.
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