Hello Friend

"Hello Friend" is a phrase recently popularized by Bill Cosby after the murder of his son Ennis at a freeway exit in Los Angeles. It was a greeting used by Ennis and the grieving Cosby wore it stenciled on sweatshirts for several years when he performed.

It's also a phrase for our times, with the growth of Facebook and the phenomenom of "friending." The world is now divided into three groups: those on Facebook, those who haven't joined yet, and those who've joined but aren't working it very hard.

I've been thinking about Facebook a little lately. I joined in early 2008 because I wanted to share photos from my trip to Harvard with others in the class, and wasn't familiar with Flickr or any of the other photo sharing programs. Plus, I was bored at home recovering from surgery and it gave me something to do. I now have a good number of friends, though some friends are organizations.

The list grows and shrinks as friends are added, people leave Facebook, or they just decide to defriend you.

Strangely, I haven't been bothered by being defriended. I can't decide if it's just like real life or actually a little bit different. First of all, it takes a while to figure out if somebody has dropped you. (Just like real life.) If they have, you may not be sure when and you'll never know why, unless you ask them in person (gasp!). I've had two former coworkers defriend me, one when she left Facebook because she couldn't stand the lack of privacy, and the other to spare my feelings because she tended to post religious messages. Nothing to get worked up about.

I have a lot of artist friends, as well as those involved in theatre. I've also had a number of people I know in both groups ignore requests. Same with architects and realtors -- lots of friends in both categories, which makes it surprising when somebody doesn't respond. It's a little more understandable when it's a consultant that you've only worked on one or two projects. In the category of people that I knew a little, largely through the arts or architecture, from projects or being friends of friends or knowing each other by reputation, it's understandable that there's a pretty thin connection there. One was an artist that originally friended me and that I wasn't sure I knew, but maybe knew peripherally. I wasn't completely sure. One day he was gone, though, perhaps after waking up and realizing he really didn't know me either.

A business associate that moved out of town, like me, accepted my request, then we exhanged the "what are you up to these days?" messages and carried each other for a few months on our friends lists until one day he was gone, too. I also had another colleague that was a personal friend drop me, too, as well as another colleague who was, I guess, friendly, also drop me. There must be reasons, or maybe no reason at all.

So far, one Fresno friend has dropped me. It was a local gadfly/blogger, a colorful chap who ended up moving out of town. He either dropped everybody, everybody in Fresno, or everybody associated with the City. I was on one of those lists. I still haven't friended that many people yet in Fresno, but so far I've already had a few business owners I know ignore the request. We're still friendly in "real life," and neither of us mention the ignored request.

I have only defriended one person: a guy I know who friended me, sent a dozen different notifications, and finally sent a notification to joind the group "I just want to bang girls on Facebook." This is guy at least in his 50's. He had to go.

A restaurant defriended me but the owner is still a friend. Not sure why that happens.

I'm still not sure what to think when people ignore a friend request. It's surprising sometimes. How do you know if they've hit "ignore?" Check "All Connections" under the friends tab, and their name isn't there with a "Friend Request Pending" label, they got your request and hit "ignore." One of the beauties of Facebook is its politeness. Nobody "declines" or "rejects" your request, it just gets ignored and quietly disappears. It's as if you never sent the request, and if neither of you ever mention it in person, nobody needs to be embarrassed.

The other alternative, of course, is to withdraw a request that's lingered too long. I give organizations three business days, and I used to give potential friends about three weeks to respond, though that changes every now and then. Organizations in Fresno seem especially slow to respond, and I've withdrawn requests from a number of them. But the Coachella Valley is not immune, and I even withdrew a request from Carnegie Mellon when it sat for weeks without a response.

I've had a former Assembly member and traveling companion ignore my request, along with a couple of current mayors, even though Antonio Villaraigosa and Arnold Schwarzenegger accepted my request (until Arnold hit the 5,000 friend barrier and had to switch to a fan page). I've withdrawn a request from a local councilman (not in a city I worked) who let it sit. I think it was around he time he was losing his race, too.

I've been ignored by a handful of local and national media figures, but one was in the middle of having her contract terminated while my request was pending. The request disappeared at the same time she did. I had a film festival ignore me (not Palm Springs). Go figure. Also ignoring my request was a locally prominent fashion designer, though that didn't surprise me. No connection.

I've also been ignored by a few high school, college and grad school classmates. With the high school friends, a few I knew (it was a small class) but were not close to, but one was a friend during high school years, I think. I think that was a case of "don't be somebody's first friend." The college friend was a former Iranian student who, I think, was living in Iran at the time of the recent elections and my friend request. Another was part of a small circle of friends (women) from another college. We'd traded Christmas cards for a few years after school, but that was hard to sustain an we didn't pick up on Facebook. A couple, like above, were periheral friends in grad school. It also helps to figure out the line of appropriate friending: a year ahead or behind in school, less likely. Somebody in your class or, better yet, in your study groups or circle of friends, much more likely.

I had a couple of good friends from Rotary ignore me, though one was new on Facebook and I believe he did it by accident, and the other seems to be on, then off, then back on again. A third friend from Rotary was somebody I'd also helped with his business, so I thought we were better connected. We weren't. It's less and less likely I'll be adding more, since I've been away for about a year now. A number of former co-workers have ignored me. Some colleagues from other cities have ignored me, which is sort of understandable. A local attorney who'd represented the other side in a number of my projects, but with whom I'd had a fun, very cordial relationship, ignored me. A couple of locally prominent preservationists ignored me, I guess because my preservation cred is suspect.

Not that developers are more likely to respond. Several developers with whom I'd worked for years on their projects failed to respond to a friend request. Is it because their projects never got built? Blame the market, not me.

Still, it's been fun following people that I know and being part of their "audience." Some of my most interesting Facebook friends are people I barely knew in real life, but turn out to be great foodies, or have a passion for music or art or design, or have something else very cool to offer. The wider the circle gets, the more interesting the daily news feed becomes -- it's not just Farmville and Mafia Wars.