This thing about “friending” on Facebook. I’m not sure I get what it’s all about. I mean, I’m usually glad, or at least OK with it, when someone “friends” me, but occasionally it leaves me scratching my head. With some of these people I can’t figure out their purpose. Are they just trying to get as many people as they can? Do they sell Amway or something? I suppose I know a disproportionate amount of authors, and maybe these people are trying to build up their publicity—and that’s fine, provided that I actually know THEM. Some of them I just don’t. I guess they find me because I am the friend of someone they know, but still, it seems a little tacky . . .
Some of these situations are worse than tacky, though. Like a certain person who keeps trying to friend me (she’s tried THREE times, now) who was in my ward growing up. The thing is, she HATED me when we were growing up. She was the bully who sent me home crying from Young Women’s many times. She has lived in my memory as the Horrible Thing, the Thing to make sure I never grew up to be, and to make sure my kids never grew up to be. Why in the WORLD does she want to “friend” me? And why does she keep trying, even though I keep “ignoring” her?
And then there are the people who say, “Hey, D! Long time no see!” and I can’t remember ever having met them before. Am I going senile already? (I AM approaching 40 this year . . . ) Who ARE these people? And how can I say, “Um, I don’t remember you”?
I really enjoy facebook, and now that I’ve figured out how to “hide” the updates from most people (but not you, of course--never you), I am able to check it out occasionally without a nervous breakdown. But, please, don’t friend me unless you’re my friend.
4 comments:
Yeah, I only accept invites from people I actually know and occasionally talk to in person. If I don't remember you from high school, you're not my friend. I accepted one from an elder in my mission and ended up regretting it because he's on there mostly for publicity for his singing career. I've had some great experiences with Facebook and getting in touch with people (I moved around quite a bit as a kid), but sometimes it's just a pain.
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I think you can be pretty certain That Thing is trying to get evidence of either a) that she no longer needs to feel guilty or b) that she did have a friend back then and she was not alone as she feared.
Once in my adult life I met a woman who frankly admitted to being a bully as a child. The three of us who worked with her were stunned and didn't really know what to say in reply. We never really thought of her the same after that.
Okay, Darlene, I was just friended by a person I hated from junior high. And ... I accepted her. I don't know why I did that. Part of me wonders if she's changed. She was absolutely horrible to me. I wonder if she remembers how mean she was.
Ummm . . . if she's that persistent, how do you know she hasn't found your blog? Maybe she wants to beg your forgiveness (although she really could do a "send message" thing if she wanted to do that. I think. You can still send someone a message when they haven't friended you, right?)
I usually just friend people to get it over with and never hear a thing from them again, but there are a few that are piled up waiting for me to decide whether to ignore them because I keep thinking maybe I *ought* to remember them.
Oh, here's a weird one: Sometimes I'm wondering what became of so-and-so and then I see them in my Fb friends and hadn't even remember having friended them. (Those are the quiet ones--unlike my brother-in-law, who posts about 700 political links each day. Fortunately I don't really mind the links, since his politics often line up with mine--but I only read about 1/40th of them.)
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