You’ve been leaving a number witty comments on your friend’s Facebook statuses. You find your own comments funny enough to laugh out loud at them. Your friend’s friends like your snappy comebacks on your mutual friend’s posts. And these friends of friends have thought highly enough of your wit to like them. Perhaps your comments make them laugh, too. Or at least giggle or chuckle.
When is it time to become a friend of a friend?
When is it appropriate to ask someone you really don’t know to be a Facebook friend. A Google+ stream or circle inclusion? Is it ever okay? Should it be considered? You don’t need permission to follow fellow Pinners! And people fall over themselves to be followed on Twitter.
These people 2 degrees away have liked your comment. Is that enough commonality to suggest that they be your friend?
I’ve asked myself this many times over. And I have never adequately answered the question. I just don’t know. That’s why I need your help down below in the comments. How do you handle this question? And does it work? How do you feel about this?
Sometimes I resist the possibility of offering a friendship request. Only because I secretly dread seeing the open invitation sitting there seemingly untouched as “Friend Request Sent”. Eric Clapton wrote the song “Layla” for Patti Harrison, then George Harrison’s wife. It was an album of unrequited love songs.
Well, is this the unrequited invitation?
Patti Harrison was married and perhaps Clapton was due to be rebuffed for that reason. Maybe a few of our 2nd degree friends are reluctant to online social friendships because of existing marital statuses. C’mon! I’m not asking them to go away for the weekend. I simply want to know who they are.
We have all received unsolicited friend invitations from an individual who can at best be called a seedy unknown. You know the type: they have few if any wall posts but perhaps a number of pictures that refer to other “material” on a different web site. This is clearly something completely different.
I am speaking about people you know, at least tangentially in the online world of existence. You both have a common friend with whom you comment and laugh or cry. Both of you are part of the same conversation. You feel like you know them but you’ve never been introduced. It’s like you’re at a party carrying on a conversation with a group of people in which the proper introductions have not been made.
Is it time to start acting like a proper host on social media sites?
Proper introductions were once considered mandatory, de rigor. No host would throw a get together without the proper acknowledgement of all who attended. Maybe we need that now. Proper social media introductions. Many consider it a pivotal role to be a “connector” of people socially. Isn’t that just like an online introduction of like minded individuals?
Maybe we can start to make sure that people who contribute on any given post of ours know each other or are given a brief intro. How wonderful! In fact, I will try this the next time the opportunity presents itself.
I offer this article as an example and invite you to do the same.
Our friends should all know each other. We are the commonality between them and ourselves. Let us be the one that helps them make the connection.
Okay, if you feel the same let me know below in the comment section. And all the more so if you DON’T agree!
Photo: @boetter
