My Love/Hate With Facebook

I saw something truly disturbing yesterday. Someone I haven't spoken to in years ... who essentially tries hard to avoid me if we are in the same vicinity ... she ... well, she added me as a friend on Facebook. I have yet to accept her friendship invitation.

Let me back track a bit.

For the longest time my FB profile was on invisible, meaning unless you were already my friend, it's like I didn't exist on the site. I did this mainly so that I could not be found by students. Being a teacher makes being on a site like that a little hard for me. I just need to be careful with what I post, but more importantly (since I don't post anything truly racy), I don't need to get into that situation where I am accused of anything. I figured I could avoid the whole thing if I just put myself as invisible. Also, for the longest time, I never used my real last name, but rather a variation of it.

Lately, I have made myself available on search engines, as well as I changed my name to my real name. Since this has happened, I have been getting friend requests from people I would rather not be acquainted with in real life, let alone a social network.

I received a friend request from a person who I had been friends with for a long time, but had a familial falling out with aka her sister is a hormonal bitch who likes to cause shit. So we haven't really spoken. The funny thing is I live near her, so it's actually quite funny to watch the avoidance dance that we've perfected.

But, lo and behold ... I make myself available on FB and BAM ... she wants to be my imaginary internet friend.

However, I did accept because we were good friends and maybe this was a way to kind of capture that again? Only, the thing is ... since she has requested my internet friendship, she hasn't sent me any kind of note to say hello. She just added me and that was it.

But NOW ... her sister, who I think I've said two words to for as long as I've known her, has now added me as a friend. This does not sit well with me. It has caused me to do such things as to block my already added old friend from seeing certain elements of my profile and to not yet accepting her sister's request. These are the type of people who are kind of sneaky and manipulative and gossipy and they are just not people that I'd want to have access to my profile.

So now, I am regretting making myself available. Because my actual friend's list reflects the people who I actually talk with in real life. Last year, I deleted over 200 friends because they were not friends in real life and definitely not friends who I speak to on a regular basis. I just couldn't keep up with that many people so buh-bye. Ugh. I hate being put in this position.

I just need to think of what to do that will create the least amount of damage ...