Maybe not many of you are old enough or even if you are, are likely remember the above line from "Friends" by the once-popular, semi-talented rap act Whodini (their biggest hit besides, perhaps, "Hounted House of Rock," which is still revived this time of year on some big-city hip-hop radio stations), but I'm not writing to talk about them anyhow, so what you have so far is pretty much a subject line and long subject line explique.
What I am here to discuss is when strangers try to friend me on Facebook. From what I'm told, this happens much more often to the ladies (we don't need to explore that in too much depth now do we?), but sometimes I'll get an inexplicable glut of people I don't recognize asking to be my pal. Now I have no problem ignoring it when I know it's a stranger, but, well, I just turned 45 and the old memory isn't what it once was and was never so great in the first place, and I don't want to insult an old acquaintence I don't recall, so I'm often at a loss as to just how to proceed. But yesterday I got two friend requests from gentlemen I'm pretty sure are strangers, and today I think I figured out how to deal with it. I've come up with a form-letter response that you are free to use, that's just the kind of guy I am. To wit:
"Does this (below) apply to you? Or do we actually know each other? If the latter, please pardon my early onset Alzheimer's.
Here's what I think. I think that if you don't actually know someone AT ALL and you want to be his/her facebook friend, you should at least write him/her a note when you make the request. It could be as simple as, "Hi, I think you're interesting/hot/someone-who-can-further-my-grand-ambitions and would thus like to be your fbook friend. Waddaya say?""