BellaOnline Forums Computers Blogs & Social Networking Do You Accept All Friend Requests?

There was just an article on CNN I believe about how "online rejection" is just as bad as real life rejection. In essence they were saying if someone wants to be your Facebook friend, and you say no, that it's like breaking up with them.

How do you feel about that?

I myself find this troubling. I get bombarded with TONS of friend requests from people that I really don't know. I use Facebook to keep in touch with very specific people - primarily family and friends. If I had say 600 people on my friend's list, I would never be able to see the status updates of my father, mother and siblings amongst everything else that was going on. It would make Facebook unusable for me.

I don't like that I'm feeling pressure "not to hurt someone" by rejecting them. My facebook account should be my private way of keeping track of what my father is doing, or what my friend of 20 years is doing. I am not on there all day long, so I need to be able to have those status entries in an uncluttered state. If I had 600 random friends filling my pages with all of their status entries, it just wouldn't work out.

Thoughts?

I don't accept everyone either. I accept only close friends and family and of course anyone here at BellaOnline who requests me as a friend.

Even if they are listed as "mutual friends", if I don't know them, I don't accept them. My Facebook is crowded enough with these dumb app invites and such. I don't accept them anymore either.

I use Facebook as well to keep up with goings on of old friends and family and only go on there a few times a week myself and only for a few moments to check updates on friends and family.

On my personal facebook page I only accept close friends and family. Just had this discussion the other day with some friends. I would rather someone email thru facebook just to say hi ..how have you been type thing instead of making a friend request. I don't make friend request of people who are passing acquaintances.

Sundancer
www.mikessportingoods.ecrater.com

You don't ever need to feel that you are hurting someone if you do not accept their request.

I myself have an extensive friends list- but my reasons were for networking when I owned my own business so of course you want to grow your sphere contact.

The other is to interact with other Wiccans and Pagans.

I accept most people. But if their account looks fishy, they don't have a proper image or their business is something I don't agree with I skip it. I can't imagine feeling bad because someone didn't friend you. I would think there would be other underlying problems there.

I usually accept people who are friends of friends - and if I start getting spam email or find their posts to be unpleasant to read I take them off my friends list.

So far I haven't gotten any requests from people who seem to be a problem, thankfully, but I don't see why people would feel so rejected if they are asking someone to be a friend that they don't know and have nothing at all to do with (as in being in the same business or went to the same school etc.)

Nancy
BellaOnline Yoga Editor

I don't accept everyone on Facebook but at least on there you can create groups and "hide" some of the people from your wall so you don't see them.

I think you can also unfriend someone without them knowing. I have accepted a friend offer before, only to discover it wasn't from the person I thought it was from.

I used to accept all friends on all social networks but I ended up getting spammed to death too so now I accept fewer.

Hi Lisa. I also 'hide' people that I don't need to read updates from. I also hide all the games and farms and gifts so i have a nice clean feed. So while I will friend people I am acquaintanced to (but not strangers), I am not a slave to their updates. :-)

Jilly - How do you hide games, gifts and farms on FB?

Bonnie - I admit I hide pretty much all games from my feeds because otherwise when I went on facebook all I would see is my game-playing friends playing their games Just put your mouse to the right of any post like that, and a hide option will appear.

It's interesting, on Facebook I would rather not friend someone who I didn't intend on following. But on Twitter, back in the early days I followed everyone who followed me - and ended up with some who were more spammy then I would like. Since I use TweetDeck to do my Twittering, I just dropped them off my list of viewable posts rather than un-following them.

I imagine if I was still using Twitter on a system where the main stream was filled with every single post, that I would have to start un-following people at this point to keep it manageable.