March 26, 2008
Facebook is Ruining My Social Life
So, I’m sitting next to my sister. My sister is 11 years younger than me (she’s in her early 20s). She’s a Facebook power user.
She’s working on her laptop, I’m working on mine. Here’s our conversation:
“Lee, who’s this?” My sister turns her laptop to show me a friend request from some middle aged white dude on Facebook.
“Oh, that’s someone I met at Podcamp last year.”
“Why does he want to be my friend so bad?”
“I dunno. Why?” I ask my sister.
“This is the third time he’s requesting to be my friend and this is the third time I’m going to ignore his request.”
“Three times?”
“Yes and I have nothing in common with him. Why does he insist on being my friend?”
“I dunno. Maybe he likes your smile?” I say jokingly to my sister.
“Well, I don’t care why. I’m just going to keep ignoring their requests. Unless it’s someone I play football with or went to school with or work with, I’m not going to accept requests from people who only want to be my friend because they know you. Can’t you tell them to stop?”
So, for the love of God, STOP! Not everyone on my friends list should be invited to yours. I mean, some of the people on my friends list are teenagers from my church. They’re on my friends list because they think it’s cool that one of the older women is actually on Facebook (I’m the older woman to them).
Others are old classmates that I haven’t seen in years. Others are from my Wednesday afternoon social bridge club. Others are family members - cousins, sisters. And the rest are people I’ve met at conferences or requested my friendship through a business contact on Facebook.
