Facebook

About 3 years ago I asked one of my college-aged friends if I should go on facebook, and he wrinkled up his nose and said, emphatically, "No, that would be just creepy. It's only for college kids!" But then facebook went through a demographic change over the next couple years and the new members became increasingly older. So about 5 months ago I got a facebook page and immediately began collecting friends. But I chose to limit my facebook friends to people I actually called my friends in real life. Even so, I now have about 40 friends. In NYC, and perhaps all over, the tendancy is to immediately add anyone you meet to your facebook friend list. So it is not unusual to see someone with 200 or 300 or even more "friends." But really, what does that mean? I don't want to know what brand of Kona Coffee someone I met once at a party 3 years ago is drinking this morning! What makes you think I might want to play scrabble with you just because we copulated one drunken night 2 years ago and will, no doubt, never speak again? And really, do you need to know why I think the candicy of Sarah "I can see Russia from my house" Palin exemplifies the decline of American Civilization just because we were introduced to each other one night at the theatre by our ex's who, by the way, haven't spoken to each other in 18 months?

So in this spirit, I gave the following response to a friend request by someone I had met precisely twice through a mutual friend:

Hey Chris. Thanks for the friend request! I hope you don't mind if i don't approve it just yet. The friends I have on face book are people I have known for a long time. So hopefully we will get to know each other in the coming months. Best regards!

New York being New York, I ran into him the following day, and he "thanked me" for denying his friend request. I smiled and said, but wasn't it the nicest rejection you ever received for a friend request?!