My Facebook Form Letter

[nemorathwald]

Dear [most Facebook friend requests I receive],

I have two rules for accepting friend requests. I must know them offline, or they must show a photo of themselves on their profile. The reason for these rules is that otherwise I couldn't keep it straight about who they are, where I know them from, or anything else.

For instance, because you meet neither of these criteria, I do not remember ever interacting with you, at least under your real name. Thank you for your friend request, but I will decline.

-Matt

Comments

[amanda_lodden.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I suppose that means I should find a passably decent photo of myself, doesn't it?

[gothicsquish.livejournal.com]

sounds good. I've added a few people that at first i thought I knew because of the mutual friends thing only to realize i hadn't ever meet the person. (i love it when they claim they've meet me recently via the mutual friends that I haven't seen in months... lol)

its a good policy you've got and I might just have to steal it.

[grypeseye.livejournal.com]

Looks like you use a different criteria when dealing with LiveJournal friend requests.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

I have been on LJ for years before joining Facebook, and my friending was haphazard rather than systematic. By and large, I have successfully distinguished LJ users through the content of their blogs. In both places, the key is to detect how rewarding each site is to me when I use different friending criteria. I de-friend people if I find I am consistenly uninterested in their blog posts, with little regard for whether I know who they are or not. In some cases, if they don't post, I simply forget that I friended them.

For me, Facebook provides no interesting content at all. Rather for me it is good as a directory of people. When I meet someone at a party, and they seem to have come with person X, I look through person X's Facebook friends list to see if they have a directory listing so I can learn more about that person. Also Facebook is good for party invites and other alerts. So I need to keep it very tightly connected between profile and true identity.