An FB encounter

No, I'm not talking about that FB. I've been using Facebook for a while now, and one particular phenomenon that never ceases to amaze and puzzle me is getting a friend request from a total stranger with no preliminaries and no context whatsoever. I'll admit that I have sent friend requests to Facebook people I haven't met in real life, or those who are friends of a friend, or someone who I thought was attractive. I also have a friend who once so often recommends someone - whom I've never met - as a friend, and since I personally know him and trust him, I don't mind such requests, as I'm not totally opposed to the idea of serendipitous friendships. Or a romantic relationship. After all, my current friends were strangers to me at one time. But in each instance, there was a conversation about a shared common interest, a few interactions or flirtatious exchanges, a meeting in the real world, or a mention of the said common friend that preceded sending a request to befriend them or acknowledging one from them. By the way, I'm defining a conversation as a message sent and a response received which shows some mutual interest. I still have to cross the Rubicon of sending a friend request to a total stranger on FB with no prior interaction whatsoever.

Such random out-of-the-blue requests make me wonder and some questions pop into my mind. Is this person only interested in increasing the number of friends on FB? Is he thinking of having a conversation with me about some shared interest(s)? Is she simply content to be a virtual friend with no desire to meet in real life? (I've got random requests from both men and women.) Maybe their idea of a "friend" and what form a friendship takes is vastly different from mine, as I didn't grow up permanently plugged into a digital device and with one foot in the virtual world. Are they feeling lonely, and Facebook provides a safe medium where a "rejection" doesn't hurt to the extent it would in real life, and an acceptance of a friend request provides a momentary high and a validation? Or are they just so high on life and full of love and light that they exhibit warm and fuzzy feelings of friendship for all beings, resulting in requests sent to total strangers? More importantly, does she have a crush on me?

Call me old-fashioned, and while I do have some wonderful internet friendships with people I haven't met in person yet, I prefer to meet people in real life and have friendships that develop beyond just streaming bits of 0s and 1s. The idea of sending someone a friend request on FB as the first step - and that too without any accompanying personal message - just comes across as too bizzare to me and raises a red flag. If someone is incapable of writing even a line or two telling me why the request was sent, that just doesn't bode well for our "friendship." It shows the dichotomy where Americans display an obsession with privacy and resist any measures they consider intrusive, yet think nothing of sending a friend request to a stranger on the internet which would give that stranger access to their personal information.

Here's the back-and-forth that prompted this post:

"Joe (not his true name) added you as a friend on Facebook."

Me: "Have we met? I don't remember meeting you."

Pithy Joe: "friend of terence."

I used to work with someone whose first name was Terrence, so I thought maybe we'd been introduced by Terry sometime. Still, I wanted to confirm.

Me: "Terence who?"

Hyper-excited Joe: "McKenna!!!!!!!!!!!" (with some 50+ exclamation points, I kid you not.)

Um. OK. Since I was unfamiliar with the name, I looked up Terence McKenna on the web to find out what exactly was his claim to fame that would get someone so excited.

Me: "I didn't know that Terence McKenna existed before you mentioned him. I'm not sure why you'd think I'm his friend."

Fruitcake Joe: "You can ignore our friend request. Perhaps we're better enemies than friends."

What? Come again???

Clearly in my attempt to have a conversation, I offended Joe. It's good to know that a friend of Terence McKenna views others as either friends or enemies, with no neutral third option available. Too bad that Joe didn't display his coherent and complete sentence construction skills earlier - I just might have approved his friend request if we'd started off with a pleasant and meaningful exchange.

Moreover, netiquette in instances like these remains fuzzy. Maybe the nice option is to simply accept all friend requests without a second thought so as to not upset anyone - and then silently de-friend the undesirables a week later. I sincerely hope it doesn't come down to it that asking a stranger some questions before deciding on their friend request is considered rude. I wonder what netiquette do others employ for similar Facebook interactions?

I'm still waiting to be poked on Facebook by a beautiful stranger though.
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