Be my friend

The other day a dear friend of mine was very much upset as some of her friends were using her FB Friends List for matchmaking. She let her dislike be public by posting this on FB, but some people just don't read it (Or perhaps they are selective READERS!). Despite her post, those people continued sending friendship request to her female friends.



In fact this happened to me as well. While I was commenting on her POST about match making, I received 3 friend requests from Her friends (not to mention past requests). This made me wonder. What exactly is purpose of social networking? To most of us it means getting in touch with long lost friends, be it school, college, work or anything.

Some like more than that. Befriending friend's friend. And there is nothing wrong in that, as I myself have met some of really nice people (no gender bias) via my friends. However in my case it was always some or the other incident/event wherein I befriended my friend's friend. And I am glad we are friends! :)

Then there is one category who are here just to make friends. New friends! with Anyone and Everyone! Again this is not wrong. Meeting new people, making new friends is hobby for few. But problem arises when people start using this for dating. People, aren't there enough dating and matrimonial sites?

During my Initial days with FB I used to get tonnes of request for friendship, but then thanks to FB privacy policy, i made few changes and the count was reduced. But i still get some requests from strangers. Well, i cant eliminate all or else i will risk being not searchable by long lost buddies.

And You may laugh at me for my biggest and most stupid habit, but whenever I get friendship request, I generally message the person asking if we know each other, with a hope to recall about him/her, (its interesting though, how there are very very very few girls sending me friend request without knowing me. Whenever it happened, it was ALWAYS because they mistook me for someone else) assuming that he/she might be someone I know. And when it is not the case, I politely decline mentioning that I don't like to befriend complete strangers. Yeah that surely is stupid thing to do on my part. As some of my friends say, Simplest way is Reject/Ignore/Block. But man, I love complications. ;-)

And during such cases sometimes I get very weird and funny replies. No kidding! One was "but once you talk then we will not be strangers". How desperate can that be? Sometimes people really push a lot for friendship. (I vividly remember one such case. It was totally hilarious and annoying both at the same time!) And i really don't get it. Is it really so difficult to respect one's decision?

So its not that I am against befriending strangers. On the contrary I never lose an opportunity to make friends wherever I go. But, when it comes to virtual world, I have problem of trust. You never know who the person really is at the other end. And in this age of social networking, lots of personal information is out there on your profile page, home page, etc. Plus, your friends, family and colleagues' info is also out there. So for online stalkers, hackers and identity thieves, this is like a gold mine. So, isn't it better to be safe than sorry?

Anyways, With more and more new social sites with enhanced features, all I see is that anyone can find you, follow you and keep adding you. The world really has become smaller. And that reminds me of a saying -
There are no STRANGERS! Only the friends whom you haven't met!
(Fortunately one has the option to choose who he/she wants to meet!)

Keep Smiling!
P.