Why does confirming a ‘friend’ on Facebook make me nervous?

I do not wish to seem impolite, but turning down friend requests seems the only option – or is it?

I have yet another ‘friend’ request on Facebook this morning – to add to the many since I joined in December 2023, and which remain unanswered. What must they think of me?

My purpose in joining Facebook was to engage with friends I know, some for many decades, and some who regrettably I am unable to meet up with as they are hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and I have neither the money nor the means to meet them in person.

When I receive a ‘friend’ request my first instinct is to ignore them, especially if they have little or nothing on their timeline or ‘about’ pages. Why would I want to be ‘friends’ with someone I know nothing about? On the other hand, that is how friends are made. You bump into someone in a pub and quickly learn if they are an interesting person you have something in common with or a malicious person knee-deep in conspiracy theories and scattering right-wing misinformation like confetti. With Facebook you do not even know if the person making the friend request is real, or just an avatar or AI. You can’t buy an avatar a pint, so why would I befriend one?

I suppose the answer might be to change my policy. Instead of ignoring friend requests perhaps I should ‘confirm’ some of them and see what happens. The problem with Facebook is, so far as I know, you cannot send a quick message or note to someone making the request to explain why I am not automatically (mindlessly?) hitting the ‘confirm’ button.

I do not like to be impolite. In a pub I would not just ‘blank’ someone if they started talking to me at the bar. I would engage in conversation and, if it turns out they are a right-wing fruitcake with hate coursing through their veins I would politely extricate myself and either sit elsewhere to ready my newspaper or leave on the pretext of meeting my mother.

On Facebook it seems we are forced to ignore or accept offers of friendship on the basis of very little information – or none at all. If we accept we can of course ‘unfriend’ them at any point in the future, but that also sounds brutal and could easily cause offence. Not good if that person turns out to be a hater who will resort to throwing molotov cocktails at you at the first opportunity. Not the ‘drink’ I would be ordering at the bar! Quite apart from anything else, there are some seriously dysfunctional, unpleasant and downright nasty people/organisations on Facebook (or X, Tik-Tok, YouTube, etc.) that I would very much like to keep my distance from.

So, the upshot of my dilemma is this: perhaps I will change my policy and perhaps I will ‘confirm’ friendship with one or two people I know nothing about. And then watch what happens…

Postscript

I do not consider myself a gullible person however, I have been momentarily ‘tricked’ into thinking that I have received ‘friend’ requests from musicians I appreciate, only to learn that they are malicious and will attempt to trick you into giving information about yourself that could be used against you, usually to obtain money. I do not fall for it but I fear for people who do.