Yesterday someone posted on facebook a very CAPITALIZED comment that struck me as incredibly ironic as well as incredibly irritated.
In short, the comment screamed at EVERYONE to not look at the poster’s friend list and trying to friend their friends even though you don’t know them and have never met them.
I’ve never met this person. They are a friend on my facebook because they found ME as a friend of a friend or of a poster on a friend’s comment and they asked me to be their friend.
The most ironic part of the TIRADE was…
The people you are asking to friend don’t know you (ajw… I don’t know you and I friended you) and how dumb are you to go to someone else’s stuff and request their friends as your friend. You should, basically, wait for them to ask you to be their friends and then it is okay.
So… I shouldn’t try to find friends on other people’s stuff because that make me rude. I should sit around and not friend anyone and if anyone requests to friend me then I should probably say no because they probably found me through someone else’s stuff and that makes them TOTALLY rude (again… back to that I didn’t know you but I friended you when you asked) and I don’t want to be friends with people ruder than I am.
The person found me through a comment I made on an epilepsy post maybe or the fact that I was a friend of someone who has epilepsy. The epilepsy community is great and we pretty much support each other totally. I don’t get a ton of requests for friends, but most of the ones I do get are because I post on people’s epilepsy posts or because I am friends with someone with seizures.
I’ve started to gain a few friends who have added me because of posts that I put on RA discussions. They have apparently “liked” things I’ve said and have decided that maybe I don’t suck. Yay. I don’t suck.
Okay. You know, I’ve been the person hunting all over everywhere for information on people who are further down the diagnosis trail than I was. Fear will make you do (apparently stupid and rude and crass) things because either you have a diagnosis that scares the crap out of you or you love someone who has a diagnosis that scares the crap out of you. Nuff Said.
I am a mom. I don’t apologize for that.
There is this AWESOME cool “NO” option. I know there are people who have ignored my request. There is a lady who has RA and wrote a very VERY depressing book that I wanted to talk to because she was diagnosed decades before I was and she was way further down the trail. I know she said no and ignored me. Okay. Nuff said. FIDO (Forget It Drive On).
I don’t hide how I feel about things, typically. I am vocal. I find information and share that information if I can. I answer questions. I provide support. Heck, I provide support to people I have never met and who live in many different places. Frankly, I’m pretty sure there are several people like me on facebook. They provide support and answers and a shoulder to cry on.
I don’t ask many people to friend me. I post on discussions. I post on my page and my wall. I accept people when they ask me to friend them. Very very few of them do I actually know.
And you know what, if I took the path of not having friends that are people I “DON’T EVEN KNOW THEM” I would have missed some awesome friendships. I would have missed knowing about some amazing people. I would have missed out of so much.
Sometimes I am sulky.
Sometimes I am quiet because either I hurt so bad I can’t post or because I’m stressed or snowed under at work.
Sometimes I am witty. Sometimes I repost a ton of stuff (pictures… quotes… randomness) that other people have posted and I have found wonderful.
Tell you what. I am http://facebook.com/awellsdba
If you want to friend me, be warned, I don’t care if I know you or not, I will accept the request. If I find you to be rude and abusive to me, I will UN-friend you. The world is a big, stupid, scary place and frankly I think that the more people who understand that we all have lives and we all need to be able to touch lives all over the world the better the world will be.
Friend me.
If you need to have a smile, I’m all over it.
If you have questions, I’m all over it.
If you want to vent and flip out periodically. Okay. Your right.
but you know… if you did something you are SCREAMING at other people not to do… realize that you are a hypocrite and that someone is likely to call you out on it at some point.
A Figment Of Fitness 
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think the situation you’re describing is different. There are people who’ve friended me on FB because we both are members of a group – we have mutual friends but don’t know one another. It sounds like that’s what you’re referring to. No big deal when that happens. When people are frequently commenting on the same posts, it’s natural that they’d friend one another.
Entirely different situation: I located my father’s biological family and it turns out to be a huge one. I keep getting friend requests from my father’s aunts and uncles and cousins – and their children and grandchildren. All of these people live in other states; they don’t know my local 3D friends, they don’t know my mother’s family, they don’t know my father’s adopted family. They have nothing at all in common aside from the fact those various people are all FB friends with me. It’s creepy that they stalk my friend list and send friend requests my friends with whom they have nothing in common. I even got email from some of my relatives asking, “Do you know who (last name) is? I keep getting friend requests from people with this name.” In this situation, I agree with the “Don’t friend my friends” sentiment — but then, I did something about it. That whole family is all in one group, and I changed my privacy settings so that group doesn’t get to see my friends list; problem solved.
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That may well be true. But how do I ACTUALLY know where people found my name? I know the person who was venting has several “friends” that I would have looked at friending… several are groups… I wouldn’t actually presume to friend people who I didn’t track down a rabbit trail to make sure that they shared similar interests and were at least friends with several friends with similar interests…
Or people I found on blogs and stuff… or by searching… authors especially.
But If someone has an Epilepsy association that I hadn’t known about before by looking at their information… then (again… technically) I will have found a valuable resource who is out there for that purpose only because I looked at who they had in their friend’s list. It is how I have stumbled on several epilepsy resources, and at least a couple RA groups. Things I would not have stumbled on if I hadn’t been looking in “the wrong place” at the right time.
But I have to admit that I have friended people’s friends because I had watched their comments to posts and thought they might need moral support for kid’s issues or who seemed to be having similar issues to ones I was having. It isn’t TECHNICALLY culling through their friend’s list, but it if they weren’t already friends they wouldn’t be commenting. AND I usually add a comment into the request letting them know that I am XYZ and I have a daughter with a similar condition or that I found their name through QRS situation… when I do try to friend someone that way.
I agree, it is creepy to try to do social mining (the company I work for forbids us from posting on the facebook page they maintain for just that reason). AND I know that it is probably why this person went on her vent… but I can’t unilaterally make blanket statements that would result in shutting so many doors.
I guess maybe the evolution of technology means that people need to brush up on more of their manners and don’t barge into other people’s houses uninvited… or at least not multiple times uninvited.
But YOUR solution seems way better… it means (GHASP) that you have to put a little time and attention into your friends list and you have to be willing to put that effort into it… but if you have people who don’t want to share, or who don’t want to be bombarded… the list of potential victims can be greatly reduced.
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Personally I don’t see the big deal about FB friending…ducking quickly here because people reading this will be throwing up their middle fingers at me..lol. And yes, I do use FB but I also tend to not hang my dirty laundry out there while using it. Now that is just me and this friend thing…well if I am not mistaken people can unfriend you, can’t they? So what is the big deal? Rather then worry about someone mining my friend’s list I would be more concerned about what FB is doing with all our info. and the fact that nothing written on FB ever…EVER…gets removed. What you say on FB will be there forever. Scary.
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I know that nothing is ever truly gone on facebook… but frankly the same thing is true about anything posted on anything hosted by someone else. Unless it is strictly on your computer, and not accessible to anyone else, it is never necessarily truly gone.
It is one reason I don’t contract with carbonite but do my own backups all by myself. It helps to be a geek and to just do it because it is second nature… but if I put it “out there” I know it is out there forever.
Facebook has met many “needs” in my life… RA and Epilepsy to a great extent… and I’m glad it has been a resource that I can access and assist with…
and yes… you can “friend” and “unfriend” all willy nilly. I guess that is what irritated me the most about the person’s post. If you take just a LITTLE responsibility for maintaining the people on your own friends list and you have the courage to cull the people who don’t make your life a little better… you can make it a beneficial tool to your morale if nothing else.
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