De-Friending My Facebook ‘Friends’

Do you have a facebook account? Sure you do, who doesn’t?

So I’m sure you know that ‘friends list’ section where you categorized your facebook friends into lists – ‘sisters’, ‘cousins’, ‘MGS Ipoh’, ‘UIA’, ‘Melbourne Uni’, ‘Mombloggers’ – so on and so forth. I’ve only started placing my ‘friends’ in these lists and found a lot of ‘strangers’ whom I can’t categorize.

They’re not my schoolmates, they’re not my husband’s friends whom I personally know, they’re not my cousins and they’re not my sister’s buddies. And even if they are – I wouldn’t know – because when they added me, they did not INTRODUCE themselves.

What did I do? I deleted them from my ‘facebook friends’ list, or in the urban dictionary, I ‘de-friended’ them. Why? More on this later.

Before you continue, let me just say that I’m not an ultra-famous personality like Scha something or that guy whose ex-girlfriends accuse of being abusive, so this is not to brag that I’ve got so many people who wants to ‘add’ me in facebook.

This is just a personal take on the current, most famous form of internet social networking, and the ethics of adding and approving friends that should come with it.

WHY FACEBOOK?
People sign up for an account on facebook for many reasons.

• to connect with current friends
• to rekindle friendship with old ones
• to get new friends
• to promote business/online-business/websites

‘Getting new friends’ should not be confused with ‘to see whether I can add up to 5000 (facebook friends limit) friends’. Let me tell you the difference :

‘Getting new friends’ mean:

• You don’t know each other, and you’ve never met. But you’ve been exchanging comments over at Mombloggersplanet website, for example, and finally found that both of you have facebook accounts. You add each other, and voila ~ a new friend made!
• You googled for fans of ‘Harry Potter’, found 5 on facebook, and add all of them so that you can share your passions – again, new friends made!
• Your husband and hers work for the same department and you met at one of the family day gatherings ~ again, found new friends!

However, ‘to see whether you can add up to 5000 friends’ simply means, you browse your current facebook friends’ list of ‘friends’ and add in random.

• Just to add to the number
• Just to look popular
• And simply because – they can!

There’s nothing wrong with ‘seeing whether you add up to 5000 friends’ -

• if the ‘friend’ you’re adding ALSO wants to collect 5000 friends
• if you’re a celebrity
• if you’re creating visibility on facebook and wants as many people to know about you and your business

However, going back to the ‘reason’ why people have facebook accounts, some people just want facebook ‘friends’ they actually KNOW.

Thus, in accepting ‘friendship’ requests from strangers, you can either be in one category :

• People add you because they want to be friends. No harm done. So, accept ALL friend request
• There are people out there with bad intentions. Must filter ALL friend request

Which one are you?

WHY WON’T THEY INTRODUCE THEMSELVES?
On that note, I currently have 40 facebook ‘friends’ pending approval. Ironically I don’t know any of these ‘friends’. Why? There was no proper introduction. These are merely strangers who expects me to simply approve their friendship requests.

Personally to me, there’s only one single important etiquette of adding friends on facebook :

PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELF!
Some people assume that :

• Just because he/she is friends with my husband, sisters or sisters-in-law, I would just approve him/her without knowing who he/she really is
• Just because we’re in the same university we ‘should’ mutually be friends on facebook eventhough we’ve never even spoken to each other
• Just because she’s in the same school as I was that i should remember who she was, eventhough she now goes by her english name which was non-existent when she was schooling (e.g: dulu nama Chan Lai Peng (bukan nama sebenar), sekarang nama konon-konon dah jadik Violet Chan – mana nak kenal!)
• Just because she is the wife of my husband’s sister’s brother’s grandmother’s old schoolmate’s neighbour – I should immediately know who she is and approve her

It’s actually fine if you’re from any of the above category, but it is only appropriate and fair to INTRODUCE YOURSELF!

• where you knew me from
• how are we connected
• have we met, if so when and where and with whom

These details will help me remember who you are, in return will facilitate my decision to approve the friendship request.

WHAT TO DO WHEN ‘STRANGERS’ ADD YOU?
Whenever someone wants to ‘add’ me, but didn’t introduce themselves, I’d have the arduous task to :

• browse through their ‘info’ to see their whether they were in the same school as I was (some I can’t remember, mainly because they use different names, and looked so different after 13 years!), the same hometown (so would probably be a neighbourhood friend or my sisters’ friends) or the same university
• look through the ‘mutual friends’ list to figure out how we are connected
• look through their ‘photo albums’ to see a shot where i finally recognize them

This however could be difficult if :

• that person makes her/his profile private
• that person uses a cute cat, a sports car or a famous actor/actress as his/her profile picture
• that person uses ‘Harimau Belang’ or ‘Lily Comel’ or ‘Maningau Aizo’ or go by any other nicknames
• have mutual friends ranging from my school friends, my cousins and my husband’s friend’s wife – how would I figure out how we’re connected?
• he/she adds people in random – so eventhough our mutual friends seemed to be my cousins, (which should make you comfortable – “oh, most of my cousins know him/her”) for all you know ALL of your cousins who approved his/her friendship request also have NO idea who this person is!

I once approved this person whom I thought was my sister’s friend, since he/she’s from the same university as my sister. After a few constant ‘inappropriate’ comments from this person, I asked my sister, and she actually told me that she herself was not that close to this person whom many people agree is obnoxious, and she herself would rather not be his/her facebook friend. I immediately deleted that person from my list!

MAKE AN EASY INTRODUCTION
When I am the one adding someone to my facebook friends list, I make a proper introduction. Here is an example :

“Hi, remember me?” is a valid opening line. We cannot assume that the person remembers you after only one single meeting, or after 13 years of leaving form 5!

“I’m Khairul’s wife,” is fine, but may not be enough. So you’re ‘Khairul’s wife’ – so what? When did I meet you? Where? At what occasion? And who is this ‘Khairul’ anyway? Why do I have to approve you just because you’re his wife?

So I added, “I’m Khairul’s wife, your husband’s MCKK junior, we met in Dubai. Remember we had dinner nasi mandi at Tawasol?”

And bam! If she still can’t remember you after those details, too bad – you could suggest to her memory-enhancer therapy. Hihi. Otherwise, she should be able to remember who you are, and can decide accordingly whether to approve your ‘friendship request’ or not.

This is what I would like from my ‘friends’ wanting me to approve their request!

INVESTIGATE EVERY ‘FRIEND’ REQUEST!

Believe me at times I had to contact my ‘actual friends’ or sisters and asked them whether they know so and so, before approving them.

“Yong, this girl was your classmate, right?”
or
“Eh, is she in our batch, or junior?”
or
“This girl, her husband is Awang (bukan nama sebenar), Do you know this Awang?”

WHY THE HASSLE OF WANTING AN INTRODUCTION?

Just addlah! What’s the fuss?

• I have no intention of keeping strangers in my facebook friends list
• I wouldn’t want unwanted messages in my inbox or invitations to applications I’m not interested with and ‘virtual gifts’ that would simply flood my wall
• We wouldn’t know their real intention of being your facebook friend
• The volume of personal information available to these ‘strangers’ might be used for personal gain
• If these are strangers, then I have no reasons in wanting to know their status updates, nor do I think they have interests in mine
• I can’t think of any category for them – ‘Strangers’? ‘Ntah’? ‘Dunno’? ‘Whozit’?

These social networking sites have a way of going about in the wrong way, whether we realize it or not. Unwanted comments, privacy in sharing photos or status updates – you don’t want just ANYONE seeping into your private life, knowing your every move, feelings or where you work between 1999 to 2002!

To me, if they don’t bother to introduce themselves, what makes you think they even care what you write on their status updates?

FACEBOOK PRIVACY CONTROL
If you do decide to add strangers or people you barely know by are remotely conected to you, Facebook has ‘privacy controls’ which can be really useful. You have to spend some time setting them up, but you have almost total control over who sees what, and how much.

After placing each ‘friend’ into groups, you can create privacy settings which you can customize according to the groups you’ve created. For example, only ‘friends’ in the ‘family’ group are able to see your complete profile, while ‘officemates’ can only see a limited one.

You can even opt for some ‘friends’ whom you hardly know NOT to be able to post anything on your wall to avoid inappropriate comments or unwanted messages on your facebook wall.

However, rather than painstakingly decide who can see what and how much, I’d rather filter my friend request approval!

If I haven’t approve your friendship request, please don’t think I’m being rude, or that I’m snubbing you or that i’m being snooty. It’s simply because I don’t know who the heck you are!

Introduce yourself – it’s common courtesy – online as well as in real life! Happy Facebooking!

Popularity: 1% [?]

Related Posts | Have You Read?

• Facebook | 5 Facebook Safety Tips
• You Hate Writing, But You Want to Blog?

Tags: facebook, facebook friends, facebook tips, guide to facebook