I was listening to NPR yesterday and they had one of those fluff things they do from time to time where the radio personality did an feature on the dilemma she faced when her mother sent her a Facebook friend request.

On the one hand, she just couldn’t face having her one outlet for frustrations of family and work being subject to censorship (on her part) because of a fear she would say something to upset her mother. On the other hand she worred about denying her mom’s friend request; feeling that that would hurt her mom’s feelings.

She even posted on Facebook about it and got a lot of comments from her friends. It sounded like a good number of them encouraged her to friend her mom although there were the occasional ones who said not to.

The upshot was that she denied her mom’s request and kept her little Facebook page private. She concluded the piece with “Watching her name vanish from the screen, I felt both courageous and cowardly. But I knew I’d averted disaster. If I had accepted her friend request, my father’s couldn’t have been far behind.”

Well, I suppose she’s got a right to her opinion and all. I know that I recently requested “friend”-ing my 17 year old grandson, his 38 year old father and my 34 year old son. I have been friends for some time with my now 14 year old granddaughter and her 37 year old father as well as her mother (age withheld at the request of the parent )

I for one love having family as my friends. It is a nice way of keeping up with their day-to-day lives – something I feel totally apart from because of the physical distance between us as well as the fact that none of us are great about phoning each other unless there’s something going on.

Well, that would be the utopian outlook…but, like me, they don’t update their walls very often…I’m more likely to read someone’s opinion on the best fat burners out there than I am to read about my son’s promotion at work. It’s sad really. We have all these lovely social networks and modern conveniences and still manage to not communicate with each other. The 37 year old has done more writing on his wall since he’s been on vacation the past 2 weeks than he has in the past year Oh — and he’s posted pictures too! THAT’s a REAL plus!

Anyway, back to the NPR piece — in this piece she admitted to having 500 Facebook friends. FIVE HUNDRED FRIENDS! I don’t think I know anybody with that many friends — heck I can’t even think of 500 NAMES of people whose names I recocgnize! With that many Facebook friends, she must not have much criteria for denying anyone else who requests friending her.

So what’s your criteria for accepting friend requests on Facebook? Mine is pretty simple, they need to be someone I know and that I have some interest in their life.

And speaking of Facebook — who plays Farm Town? I’m thinking about writing a post on best practices for advancing in Farm Town – would you read it??

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