We're Not Close

I used to only have friendster and a blogspot. When multiply wasn't so big yet, my bestfriend Renee invited me to me make one and I opened one for the purpose of being able to visit her multiply page. Then I realised, for a trigger happy person like me, multiply is a better choice. It was just way too easy to post pictures for my old friends to have a glimpse of my life away from my home town in Davao.  So i finally gave up my blogspot account.

I've never been really huge on Friendster. I rarely initiated inviting new friends, except if they were old friends I haven't talked to for ages or those who have moved to another country. I enjoyed uploading pictures, but I have semi-given it up when I decided to update my multiply more. I visit it every now and then because a good number of my Filipino friends abroad seem to still use it as a means of communication. Ella, my best friend who is now based in Canada would rather send me a message through friendster than email me, which I find quite weird, but its ok.

One mistake I realised with friendster is that because I was so polite 5 -6years ago I added a lot of people as "friends" even if they were mere acquaintances or they were simply my school mates in HS or college. In hindsight, I realised some of them rarely talked to me when we were in school, why did they add me? And after they've added me, it's not like they tried to make conversation and asked how I was and where was I. They are just there, floating around in my list of contacts and I made a mistake of making it so easy for them to know about my life. geezzz. 

A few months before I left for the UK last year, my friend Dex insisted I open a facebook account. She, along with a few more friends have invited me but I refused to make another account similar to friendster and multiply. She wasn't doing anything much one fine day in JESCOM and decided she'll make my account for me. It was Dex who first filled up my profile, she chose a picture of me from her files and even made up my initial password for facebook. Back then I only had about 10 friends in facebook, mostly from JESCOM too and it didn't really bother me.

In a way I thank Dex for FB because as soon as I was in the UK, people asked me if I did have an account. FB is a very good way to communicate for most of the people there. It was quite useful because there were times that we'd communicate more through FB about an event, rather than through text or calls.  I am most thankful for FB, especially now because I get the chance to see and talk to my global xchange teammates and to the youth I have become friends with in Newham. Its chat feature is also nice, because I get a chance to chat with friends I don't have YM addresses of.

Facebook's popularity is growing right now and I find a lot of those who were my friends from friendster having FB accounts. At first it was quite nice to be adding them as most were/are actually good friends of mine from school, from JVP, from GX or from previous work. And again the chat feature allows me to talk to some of my old HS classmates.

But the past couple of months, some people just kept on inviting me to be their friend and I seriously DON'T KNOW WHO THEY ARE. Some of them I have 4-5, even up to 12 common friends, but I still can't remember them. I asked a mutual friend once who this person is for example and she said Person X was her classmate before in a Science class. But this mutual friend is my friend from HS, who took up a different course in college and therefore Person X never became my classmate. So WHY IS SHE ADDING ME? Seriously? The least she can do if she wants to be friends with me is leave a message with her invitation to add me. A few I don't even have mutual friends with, they just happen to study in the same university as me. Did they really think I would add them just because of that? I'd add a person more if s/he was inviting me to join a CAUSE rather than add a random person who went to my school a couple of years before I did go there.

The nice person in me however doesn't have the heart to ignore those invites coming from people I have "mutual" friends with. I just don't want them to receive an email saying I ignored them, because to be ignored and to be rejected is quite hurtful. ( does anyone know if they do receive that kind of email when they get ignored?) So they remain there, as an invite in my box, but they've been there for about a month or so.

Not all my contacts here in Multiply (I'm glad I have managed to limit my contacts here in multiply to people I more or less really know.  I've met everyone here in person at one point in my life) or (in FB) are my Close Friends, but these are people I'm willing to share my stories with, my pictures with, my rants with, my views in life, politics&governance with, technically my life with - so I just don't add random people. It's too STALKERish/like (i don't think there's a word like this but nevermind), to be adding people you hardly know in a network that allows people to post pictures and blogs. Don't you think so? I think so.