To Friend or Not to Friend – Tina B's World

To Friend or Not to Friend

3 Comments / Communication, Friends, Relationships, Social Media / By

Friend requests.</p>

Any Facebook/social media user, whether avid or periodic, is faced with these at one time or another. Most times, accepting or declining is a no-brainer. Other times? Not so much. The request might sit in the box for days before you make a decision.

Why?

Well, Facebook has made it abundantly easy to find people now. THANK YOU for bringing me out of my peaceful hiding place! I liked not being able to be searched and stalked. I now have people sending me requests I don’t know if I would like to talk to. I feel bad declining, but I know we have absolutely nothing in common anymore and quite frankly, you won’t like what you see on my page. I’m trying to save us both the trouble of an eventual “unfriend”.

Recently, I got a request from someone I haven’t spoken to in a decade. While I’m grateful for the friendship I used to have with him, there is an issue now… He and his wife are uber-religious.

I’m not religious. I don’t attend church. I agonize whether to even go on holidays or on special occasions. The only exceptions have been weddings and those have been few and far between. No one gets married in churches anymore. I couldn’t even tell you what my current “beliefs” are. As a result of all of this, the request has been sitting in the box for almost 4 days now.

I have auto-accepted family members and later regretted it. Truth be told, I’m glad I wasn’t close to some people growing up. They would have made me miserable and probably would have gotten socked in the face on more than one occasion. Others just make the dumbest comments. Some post CONSTANTLY about every minute detail of their (BORING) day. On my old blog, I posted about THIS fiasco. Things like this make me wonder why I even have a Fb page in the first place..

I’ve also deleted a few extended family members because they are easily offended, apparently, and try to “call me out” for posting MY opinions. “Delete delete delete” has become my new motto.

What do you do when you get a request? Do you automatically accept or do you think about what having that person have “access” to you would bring about?

3 thoughts on “To Friend or Not to Friend”

  1. Beth

    I am inclined to agree with your assessment. I hardly ever accept friend requests, although I agonize over them anyway. I don’t keep up with that coworker from millions of years ago, and we stopped keeping up for a reason. I sincerely doubt that if they were on my page now, they’d be interested in me updating everyone on the state of my screaming children. Save them the trouble, I say! Besides, you can totally send messages to people who aren’t friends if the status quo changes, or something major requires your attention, and in all honesty, it’s not about who has the most friends. You can’t tell me you actually keep in close touch with 3000 people. And if you can, I shall now put you on the Pedestal of Do-It-All-And-Probably-Still-Look-Fresh. 🙂

    Reply
    1. Tina B

      LOL! Thanks!
      There is literally only one person (non-celebrity) that I can think of that is understandable if he has a lot of friends. He knew everyone! Since he’s a trainer now, he trains most of the people we went to school with. For some, it’s a popularity contest… or they just want to show off. Ugh good riddance I say!
      Thanks for commenting 🙂

      Reply

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