New People
You can classify all people you meet into one of two categories:
- People that will immediately friend you on Facebook.
- People that won’t.
A few nights ago I had a conversation with someone I met through mutual friends. Other than our mildly overlapping social circles, we had nothing in common. For some reason, however, I could tell he would send me the fated friend request. We all parted ways from dinner around 11:30 pm, and sure enough, at 2:43 am, I received the notification.
So what gave it away? I have no idea! Regardless I’m now going to over-analyze friend requesting.
Type 1 of People:
The On-Siter
This douche can’t even wait for the privacy of his own space to search you out. He obviously has a smart phone and really wants to show it off. He might be inspired to tell you all about its cool features even though it’s an iPhone and you have common sense and/or one yourself. He’s too chicken to actually ask for your number, so brings up the communication paradigm exaggerated by social networks in the 21st century to segue into instead asking you how to spell your last name so he can better stalk you.
The No-Patience Friender
This person, like my new friend, sends the request within hours of separation from your face to face encounter.
The most likely scenario is that he or she has been facebook stalking you for months (impossible! i have great privacy settings! WRONG) and now finally has an excuse to see what you Jullie X responded when you posted “I HOPE EVERYTHING’S OKAY KEEP ME POSTED SWEETIE!” (you wrote that, don’t lie).
Your real encounter was fun because you both knew exactly who the other one was but pretended to stutter for a moment after introductions (Sarah, was it?). Occasionally this is completely acceptable especially if it’s that one from from Boston your other friends that all went to college together talk about ALL THE TIME (she’s SO FUN!) but you’ve never actually met. You know the type.
The Acceptable Delayer
People actually establish a REAL LIFE RAPPORT. Then a few weeks or so later you come across a YouTube video that reminds you of your inside joke and you go to share when…what? where are you? ohhhhh.
The Late Comer
You’ve been mutual acquaintances for a while and the situation above never arose. One day while EXTREMELY bored the person comes up in the comments of the profile picture with a kind of famous guy. Request sent out of curiousity followed by a quick acceptance and resulting “OMG how were we not friends before!?” wall post.
The Hold Out
You “don’t friend people”. Neither do they. You enter an intense game of cyber chicken.
