The nature of friendship

[Tom Cain]

At 4:33am on May 26th, 2007, Tom Cain said...
Can I just ask a question here people? Call me an old fart who's completely in touch with modern technology, but is friendship on here a two-way street? By which I mean, if I accept someone as a friend of mine, do I become a friend of theirs, too? Or do I have to go down on bended knee and plead to be put on their dance-card?

It's kind of an interesting philosophical point, too ... can you have a one-way friendship? (It's the emotional equivalent of one hand clapping, maybe ...)

[Patti McCoy Jacob]

VERY timely question. I received six "friend" requests over the last couple of days, and when I checked them out, four of them had already agreed to be my friend a while back.

So I guess I would say the request needs to go both ways.

I guess...

[Jordan Dane]

If this is like MySpace, it is a reciprocal post. Are you feeling a little unloved, Tom? At 4:30 in the morning, it's easy to feel that way, dude.

I have to admit, I'm not sure how friendships work here as opposed to MySpace (which I'm more familiar with). The main thing at CS is to participate in the discussions and get to know people through their thoughts and in some cases, their peculiarities.

Don't tell anyone, but there are some damned strange folks here. Shhhh.

[Jordan Dane]

Margot--I'm ready for a second Labatt, how 'bout you? I'll buy the second round.

[Jordan Dane]

If we're celebrating my deal, then we're definitely going out and the evening's on ME.

[Donna Moore]

I very seldom ask anyone to be my friend - not because I don't want to, but because I think they might not wish to. I accept almost all friend requests, and very gladly. I think I have declined 3 - and they were all people who weren't really Crimespace people but just wanted to sell me something.

[Don Anderson]

That's my philosophy, too, Donna.

[Pepper Smith]

Goodness. I guess it depends on how you view this whole friending thing. I do tend to look at people's pages before I respond to friend requests, and I also check before sending requests myself. Usually they're people whose posts I've read and who interest me. I have had three requests I'd sent sit unanswered for nearly a month, after which time I withdrew them. Shrug. There are still a bunch of folks here I haven't gotten a chance to check out yet.

I tend to friend people because I want to be able to reach their page without going through the whole member list to find them again. There are some folks I've noticed who friend everyone on the member list the instant they get here, as if they're obsessed with having the complete set. That seems like kind of an odd definition of friend to me, but whatever floats their boat.

[F.T. Bradley]

I was curious, so I checked some people who I've accepted as friends and I show up as theirs, even though I never invited back. So accept a friend, be a friend, I guess.

[Jordan Dane]

I really think it's a timing issue of when both ways get accomplished. The one-way friendship doesn't make sense except if you're Paris Hilton.

[Daniel Hatadi]

Based on lots of discussion of this about two months ago, I added a number of questions/answers to the help page.

The help page is your friend. :)

[David Terrenoire]

You know, I've never understood that either.

I'm glad you asked.

[Lesa Holstine]

I've found it interesting, Tom. I've accepted people as Friends, and then never heard a word from them. At least when I invite someone, I try to drop them a note. Or, if someone invites me, at least I drop a line to acknowledge it. I seem to have a large number of "Friends" who, as someone said, just seem to invite everyone. I accepted everyone who invited me when I first started, and then became a little more cautious. I really was hoping to have conversations.