But you're not my friend!

With great amusement I noted that Digitalpoint have upgraded their forum and turned on the social networking side of vBulletin and I had a swag of “friend requests” waiting for me.

It reminded me of an incident this week when I recieved a Facebook friend request from someone who was instrumental in an accusation of professional misconduct directed toward me last year. After the guys at Computer Forensics had done their job they they had also shown who was in the wrong.

Now why, oh why, would this chap suddenly want to be “my friend”. We don’t talk, meet face to face or have business dealings? I can think of only two reasons.

  1. He sees me as a potential client
  2. He sees friendship with me as an endorsement

Both options are flattering I guess.

But it leads to the gnarly question. When real people, people you do actually know, send a friend request it’s awkward when you say “No”.

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2 Comments

  1. Peter
    August 11, 2009

    Ha! Yep. I know this one. You’d think, given the history, he’d steer clear of you!

    You are unlikely to purchase services from someone involved in making such an allegation against you, however peripherally. Lowlife.

    So I tend towards option 2.
    Or option 3: inattention to detail.

    I haven’t adjusted to the chronic devaluation of the word ‘friend’ on facebook etc.
    Surely we’re still known by the company we keep.
    Perhaps we need a new term…

    -P

  2. fastreplies
    September 10, 2009

    Or maybe
    He sees that as a pact of a neutral stance or
    He offers you non-competitive alliance or
    Maybe he believes that to have bad friend is better than to have good enemy and that to keep weak peace is better than rage good war

    I can go forever but… consider possible outcome if he said NO and rejected your friendship proposal.

    fastreplies

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