I get a lot of Facebook friend requests each day, anywhere from 20 to over 100. I have maxed out on my profile a number of times over the years and have endured the weed-out process that some people will do in an effort to keep a personal profile truly personal or industry-related. This time, however, I am no longer able to clean up my friends list because I truly know the people on it. Despite being almost maxed out, I get random requests from people whom I do not know, and I have to delete these requests. Let’s do the math here: even if I wasn’t already right at 5,000 friends, how could I possibly add all the requests I get daily? If I had a friend-free profile, and received an average of 80 requests a day, I would max out in two months.

Some people are nice enough to message me beforehand, asking permission to send a friend request. What amazes me though, is how pushy and sometimes rude people can be when I kindly say no. Some people will cuss me out, saying that I am not that special and that they didn’t want to be friends with me anyway. Others will keep messaging me repeatedly, pleading with me to add them. Some will mention that “we have a few mutual friends” when I can see that the mutual friends are random. I have had to resort to blocking people who became aggressive or threatening. I have also gotten requests with messages along these lines: “You’re very beautiful. We should be friends.” This tells me that the person has no clue who I am, but just saw my avatar and thought I was hot.

I will be very clear and say that a message stream similar to the one you see above will never be endearing, only extremely annoying. Anyone who dares to scold me for not responding shows his or her insanity and gets blocked. What I don’t understand is how a complete stranger can conjure up notions that anyone with even the smallest bit of celebrity status is somehow a messaging buddy, a kindred spirit, a best friend, or a virtual lover? Sorry, but that just spells crazy, and I will not tolerate it.

So if you and I don’t know each other and you send a Facebook friend request which I reject, please don’t take it personally!