An open letter to the facebook using public:
Look. If I've never met you, then we probably aren't friends, and so I'm not going to accept your friend request. Especially if you don't even have the courtesy to introduce yourself. Even if we have mutual friends, it's not going to happen. If you can't be arsed to say how you know me and why you think I should friend a complete stranger, then piss off. Even something like, "I'm a friend of Lucy's, she's mentioned you before and I thought you sounded cool" would be enough. I don't even care if you ignore me after that point - given that I don't like facebook and rarely spend any time with it, I probably won't even notice. If you don't do this, I'm going to assume you've added me just because you want to up your numbers, and I hate people who do that.
If I have met you, but we disliked each other, or didn't interact with each other, then this too implies that we are not friends, and so, once again, I'm not going to accept your request. Especially, once again, if you can't be arsed to say hi. If I didn't like you or hang out with you in school, I'm probably not going to want to do so now, especially given that we live in different towns, and so have even less in common and less actual motivation to get on then we did before. If you do add me, knowing full well that we never were friends and will probably never grow to be so, I'm going to assume you've done so just because you want to up your numbers, or because you don't understand the basic definition of the word "friends", or that you have no understanding of personal boundaries, and, once again, I hate people like that.
If we were really good friends in kindergarden, I'll add you back. If you were in my class for a couple of months in year eleven and we never really spoke or clicked, I won't.
If you are a friend of my sister's and introduce yourself or she's told me about you, I'll add you back. If you were in her year and a collosal cow to her, but not openly bitchy to me, I won't.
If we've only met breifly once or twice, but those meetings were pleasant, I'll add you back. If I knew you for years and we never really liked each other, I'll wonder what the hell is wrong with you, but possibly add you back if I have no active animosity towards you. Note the "possibly". If I knew you for years and we barely spoke, I won't bother. If I knew you for years and only ever saw you behaving like a complete jackass to me and others, I won't.
If you've never met me and don't introduce yourself, I'll either ignore you or message you asking how you know me. Here's a tip on that one by the way; replying with, "we don't [know each other], but we could chat on facebook chat, if you like...", is pretty much a sure fire way to guarantee that I'll ignore you in the future. Especially if you live in another freaking country. I don't have facebook because I want to meet new people, I have it for the sake of the people I already know, and you going through the profiles of people who bare no connection to you whatsoever, and who don't even share many interests with you, is freaking creepy. You want someone to chat to, go to an actual chatroom. Or, if you do want to chat with a complete stranger, at least introduce yourself properly.
In short, don't "friend" me unless we are, in some very loose sense of the word, actual frigging friends.
Furthermore, manners matter, even online, and manners involve telling me who the hell you are before you presume to insinuate yourself into my friends list. My friending criteria actually isn't that strict: one nicely worded message or any tiny bit of positive regard in the past twenty years will probably get you in. I don't think either of these things are unreasonably illogical or overly demanding.
And if you just want a big friends list, then feck off and get some bloody perspective, you shallow, moronic little twit.
Thankyou, and goodnight.
PS., Also, I hate facebook. Just, like, in general.