I have so many unanswered facebook friend requests right now and I’m sure some people must wonder why I haven’t accepted them (unless of course they’ve forgotten that they sent me one in the first place). So I thought I’d share my reasons for not accepting facebook friend requests – I’d love to hear yours:
1. I don’t know who you are.
If your twitter name and your blog name are different from your actual name, the chances are I won’t know who you are when you send me a facebook friend request. Give a girl a clue, for goodness’ sake!
2. We’ve never met.
For the past 18 months I have made it a rule to only accept people as friends if I actually know them. My facebook friends include family and good friends, bloggers, but also some reasonably high profile names. So I have to be careful about who I accept.
3. We’ve met, but I don’t really want to be your friend.
This happens. It’s not you, it’s me. Or something.
4. You are one of my ex-boyfriends.
I know facebook can bring old flames together. But exes are usually exes for a reason.
5. You were horrible at secondary school.
Growing up doesn’t mean you forget the people who were mean to you as a kid.
6. You are a total stranger.
From time to time I get bizarre friend requests from people who I definitely don’t know. Once I even got a request from a man who was just requesting people called Liz Jarvis. I kid you not.
7. You are the child of one of my friends.
I try not to accept requests from children if I can possibly avoid it, simply because my friends tend to share stuff on facebook which is not really suitable for under-18s *cough*.
8. You are my mother.
OK, so far this hasn’t happened. But as she nags me non-stop in real life, I’d definitely try to avoid her in my virtual one.
9. I’m suspicious of your motives.
Enough said.
10. I very rarely go on facebook.
I’m much more of a twitter girl. You can follow me @LizJarvisUK.
[…] But a mistake I made a few years ago was accepting friend requests from people I’d gone to school with, who really, I didn’t like very much when I was 13, 14, 15 or 16, and had even less in common with *cough cough* years later. And also when I first started mummy blogging, accepting requests from bloggers I didn’t really know. I am by nature a cat person – I want to know why I should like you, rather than a dog person, who wants everyone to like them. So accepting requests from what amounted to strangers went completely against the grain for me. (If you’ve sent me a friend request and I’ve ignored it, this post explains why.) […]
Haha, I like it – I’ve a few to add.
1. I’m your boss – is one I’ve used. Not only do I not want my staff prying into my private life, I don’t want to really know what they get up to.
2. Just because you know someone I know doesn’t mean I want to know you
3. You see me in person frequently and never even say hello so why the heck would I want you as my facebook friend?
4. You may have forgotten that trouble you caused for me with your lies when we were 19 but I sure as heck haven’t!
5. I think your wife may have something to say about you adding the ex who broke your heart and who you needed 4 years of therapy to get over.
6. No way! You have the potential to have far too many photos of me doing things I’d rather my children remained oblivious to thank you!
9 and 3 are about me aren’t they?
Great post and I agree with all of your above points. I recently reduced my friends by over 2,000 to 250 (ish) because I realised I didn’t know the majority of them! I was just accepting friend requests willy nilly and sending them out thinking it would be publicity for my book. How wrong I was! It’s an excuse for people to post rubbish on your wall, pester you about attending totally irrelevant events, not to mention events that are all over the world and you couldn’t get to if you tried, and then there’s the stupid idea of including anybody in a group just to boost the numbers. That really rattles my cage. So now, I’ve changed all my settings and limit my friends list to people I either know online or in person.
CJ xx
Oh my, yes all of these (apart from the high profile names!).
Also don’t Friend me because I once went to school with your wife and have friended her – it’s only because i want to know if she’s more successful than me!!
I ditto all of the above and in addition I find it particularly prudent not to accept your boss – he really really doesn’t need to know how much you drank last night or how much you hate your job….