To Be A Friend . . . Or Not ?

That is the question I have been asking myself these days regarding a few recent friend requests from fellow gatherers I really do not know {yet} and many of my other writing or social networking sites that provide friend requesting. I am cautious but quite vulnerable to being sweet-talked to from clients, readers, visitors, strangers about how great my stuff is and how they like me, and we have things in common and blah, blah, blah WHEN ALLl they really want is to have another notch in their 'friend' belt so they could gain more credits, or points, or even cash if it is a referral deal.

Well, I should have known . . . despite being so soft-hearted and accepting that yet another would come out of the woodwork asking for friendship and then mass email me right off the bat, I have been 'taken' again ! As soon as I accepted this friends request, four hours later double mass-mailing message for me to read hers and yet another friends of hers material. Not even a thank you for accepting her request to connect going on my stupid assumption that she or he even gave a rats ass about what I did, liked, was about and why they felt a connection could be possible.

It breaks my heart that they want to start sending me messages that they send to at least 50 other people. Maybe I thought too much of the idea that perhaps accepting a freind request meant that this person was genuinely interested in finding more about me. Perhaps we could connect on something besides a 'gather' common ground.

I like commenting on things I know or have a pretty decent exposure to so that I may be objective. If I cannot be objective, it is difficult to have a discussion. If I agree, there is also little left to discuss if arguments are based on disagreement. But if a person wants to know someone else, I mean really know someone else, as a typical friend request should not only imply but be, then this person genuinely wants to know me and converse for awhile. write to me, comment some, interact and then further down the road approach me with a mass mailing. But if all you want is to just have me 'added as another id' to not harrass but rather to well heck what other word is there but harass without the negative connotations behind it, then please don't bother.

Couldn't "we" have started on a better foot than the one that sits and begs rather than the one the body stands on and works their approach from more intimately-rapport connections ? I need points too, but I am not begging to get them. For further 'friend getters for mass-mailings' I will write this in response to your mass mailing after a friend request has been accepted from you, "Please accept my apologies if I do not comment right away at the request of being messaged along with thirty or so other names . . . to do so, is not the 'gather-style', nor should it be yours."

Freindship is a beautiful, cherished relationship between two people, like-minded or not, and it should never be started or continued to earn points in life, even at gather where my community of firends I have had and cherish deeply before 5pm, when I accepted this new person (and you know who you are), would never mass-mail me unless asking me first. That is how the respect is earned and well-kept on gather, let us not fail in maintaining that ! We are here to earn readership and genuine concern and appreciation for all the members here at gather begins with our immediate closest friends and spans outward, earning the respect and devotion from both visitors and members of the gather community.

sharing the light,
Miss Erica Hidvegi