Cheersbarnaby

Hi Barnaby,

On Facebook, is it better to accept a friend request from an old friend and then remove him or her later when they’ve forgotten about you or just ignore the person right off the bat even though you have 6 mutual friends?

Elliott

Hey Elliott,

There is no doubt that social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Bebo have helped us get closer to our friends, and to re-connect with people we may otherwise have lost touch with. However, this can definitely work as a negative as well, as when people friend request you it and you are not that keen to get back in touch, it really does give your conscience a work-over.

I have had this exact problem myself, but on a grander scale. I became infatuated with the communication opportunities that Facebook gave me when I split up from my long-term girlfriend around a year and a half ago. I friend requested pretty much everyone I could think of from my past and present, as well as some people I thought I wanted to be part of my future, if you know what I mean. But, as with anything else, these things have a definite shelf-life, and when I realised that I was just getting annoyed with the bombardment of pokes, messages, friend requests and event invitations; I made a decision to start culling any ‘friend’ I had acquired who I wasn’t in touch with directly through the site. So, I began to delete people from my friend list and went from having over 400 friends to just 69, which was incredibly liberating for some weird reason.

I went on with Facebook in this guise, feeling better about myself until a few weeks later when I started getting angry emails from people who I deemed only as acquaintances, but who had taken it incredibly personally that I had deleted them from my friend list on the site. This resulted in me having to spend more time messaging those people individually to explain that I was trying to wean myself off the site as it was taking up too much of my time, and that we never spoke on the site anyway so it shouldn’t matter. Obviously, having to spend my time doing this was counter-productive as I was now on the site more often than I had been before. This left me with a dilemma of my own, do I re-add those people each time they re-friend request me (which they were)? Or do I ignore them and risk continued wrath from people who see Facebook as just as real a friendship relationship as actually seeing them in real life.

In short, I ignored some and re-added others. It tended to work that I re-added the ones I deemed as the most sensitive, and those people I thought would slag me off if I didn’t. I am frankly, disappointed that I have been so weak, and just writing this reply is making me re-evaluate. But as it stands, I am not ready to quit the site altogether so I have to make these ridiculous decisions based on other people’s sensitivity levels.

Does any of this help your decision-making process Elliott? I’m not sure. It has to be a personal thing I think. But one option that is possible that I have used and you have alluded to, is to accept friend requests when they ask, and then remove them a few weeks later. However, that annoying ‘Friends you may know’ tool means that people can see when you have removed them and makes this more and more difficult to do successfully, i.e. without hurting their overly susceptible cyber feelings.

Cheers

barnaby

My suggested soundtrack:

Lean On Me – Bill Withers
You’ve Got A Friend – James Taylor
Pure Morning – Placebo