[spacytracy]

Arabracer. If you unfriendly or block the only way they'll know it is if they try to write on your wall or go on your page.

The less-obvious one is to just hide them, that way none of their postings show up on your wall. That is my typical approach to annoying people.

[magicteetango]

I only add horse people I don't know. And the reason most of that was was that I had my settings so no one could send me a message and to buy things off of FB sales pages I had to add them. I need to go through and delete them all.

Otherwise they were COTHers or people I knew of even if I didn't know them. I also hide the annoying people as opposed to defriending.

[dalpal]

No....Facebook is only for people I consider friends or close colleagues. I do not accept requests unless I consider that person an actual friend or colleague. Made a mistake of friending a teenager at the barn once.....She started a woe is me, school is out to get me thread one afternoon that got her quickly deleted from my friend list. I never vent on facebook...the most I ever do is post pet pictures or only comment on positive things in my life. If I need to vent, I save that for people who I am extremely close to and see in person. I don't want my laundry out there on the internet.

[LauraKY]

I do, but I do a lot of dog rescue networking on facebook.

[WoofNWhinny*]

Yep, although I generally wait for them to request to be added rather than asking directly, unless I know them other than through FB.

I don't post personal stuff on FB. I DO post a lot of fun, interesting, or informative links and photos, mostly related to horses and dogs. With the occasional off-beat post such as a couple of wonderful snow-pocalypse posts (a photo of a car full of snow and a link to a time-lapse video of the snowfall).

I very much enjoy following a few people that I don't know in real life as they post about their horses or other interests that we have in common.

Anyone here who wants to friend me is more than welcome!

[witchesbrew]

It's good to see that most people don't accept every single person who they've made eye contact with. There was a time in college where I added/accepted a ton of people in my class that I didn't know..I regret it now. This thread is a reminder that I should be deleting a ton of people that I don't even see or contact anymore.

[4cornersfarm]

At my last job, my boss' teenager and teenage boarder tried to friend me and actually pestered me about it for a long time (irritating!). With adults the being offended part is going to be a little harder to deal with. Before the last job, all of my coworkers and supervisors were my friend on FB as well and it made things really awkward. I felt like they knew more about my life than I did half the time! There was no separation of work and personal life, hence my current stance.

That's easy. Tell them you don't friend anyone under 18. Especially anyone under 18 related to where you work. I work at a middle school, and none of the kids here are my facebook friends.

[4cornersfarm]

Does anyone here friend people on FB that you do not know in RL? I personally WON'T. I saw some kind of CSI or something where people got stalked by a FB friend. I am not all that into FB and certain people do not know some things about me.

I have well over 1500 facebook friends. I'm a writer, and the vast majority of them are other writers or fans of mystery books. The majority of them I have not met in real life. A lot of them are horsey people, many of those I have actually met in real life. I also have a couple of groups of people I've known online through newsgroups for close to 20 years, never met in person, but feel as if I know them, who are now facebook friends. If I get a friend request and it says 190 mutual friends, I'll say yes. If I get a friend request from a young woman in a bikini with an unusual name and no mutual friends, I say no. I've removed 1 person from my newsfeed because he was constantly posting offensive stuff (I think he writes soft porn or something.) I use facebook as a way to promote my writing and my lesson business (I do have pages for both my books and my farm) so I don't really want to put a limit on my friends. Some of those people could be buying my books, even if I don't know them.

[GraceLikeRain]

I haven't met ~ 5% of my facebook friends. Between dog showing and horses I often know of people and they know of me but we might not meet in person. However, I still enjoy reading about their successes and they've been incredible kind towards me as well. In the past month I've met 4 dog people that I was facebook friends with for several months. It was fun getting to talk in person.

On the other hand, I regularly delete facebook friends that I haven't spoken to in 6+ months. Being a college student means that a lot of people come into my life for a brief period of time through a shared class, organization, etc. If I want to stay connected to that person in a professional capacity then I will look for them via linkedin but otherwise I get a bit weirded out knowing that Susie from my I/O class three years ago is reading my status updates.

[rideagoldenpony]

I have hundreds of friends I've never met in person.

But I use my page for pony networking, and have pony friends from all over the world. It's fun! I've met so many really great people and enjoy seeing ponies from places I likely will never go!

I don't post anything on Facebook I wouldn't tell the entire universe. It's networking for me. I've met people that are now friends that I probably would have never met otherwise.

There are no privacy issues when you don't post things that are private -- and really, it's Facebook. Don't post things that ARE private there. That's not the venue for them.

[GingerJumper]

I use it for networking, so I have some I've never met. However, they're all horse people and I enjoy seeing what they're up to with their horses and other things we have in common I've also got a friend who I've never met who owns my horse's half sister, and it's always really fun to see what they're doing and compare sibling stories.

I also don't post super private things online, so it doesn't really matter. I figure that if it's so private that you only want certain people to see it, then it probably doesn't belong online, but that's JMO.

[SSacky]

I have I think 3 people I don't know in RL. One is the previous rider of the horse I rode for a few years. I found her and messaged her a few questions about him, she'd known him since he was a colt and loved getting updates from me. Other two are from another forum I post on, both were sick at one point and we basically made a network to assure we a) had an easier way to keep in touch and b) could help out if possible. Both are near my age and we've become close enough friends.

I have nothing on my facebook I wouldn't show my parents or a future employer, so nothing to hide here!

[Cielo Azure]

Yes- draft horse, lusitano, yoga, GA horse people - I find FB a great place to network and learn. More personal than here but a large enough "Community" to be fun.

I have many friends through FB that I now have met in person that I didn't know before friending them. I have a driving clinic here at my farm with 25-35 people attending next month, almost all are FB friends that I have never met.

I am now taking a yoga class within 5 miles from my house, because I met someone on FB who teaches yoga. She is now also working for me at the farm.

FB is a great tool for networking and community building, as well as making new face-to-face friends.

[Laurierace]

I don't send many friend requests but will generally accept a request if the person has a horse in their profile picture and/or has several friends in common with me (even though I might have only accepted their request due to the horse in the profile!) I will say I was at Tractor Supply the other day and immediately recognized the cashier as one of my FB friends that I accepted only because she had a horse in her profile! Kind of freaked me out! We are "friends" but strangers. If she recognized me, she didn't show it.

[cowgirljenn]

I do. I get tons of friend requests from people who are friends of other rescue people, some from people who had read my articles/book, and such. I don't post private things on there anymore (I learned to post vacation photos AFTER we got home and such). It is good networking for the rescue, so I use it that way.

[LoriO]

Some of the best friends I now have on FB are people that I didn't know to start with. Many of them were people that sent me friend requests when I was running the 9/11 10th Anniversary Candle Memorial, while some I have deleted some of them have become just amazing friends!

[Perfect Pony]

I just deleted over 50 people from my facebook friends list. Funny how they accumulate. Some I requested, but I have decided I will only have people I know IRL that mean something to me, or family.

I'd love to dump FB altogether, but I use it as a address book...

[Finzean]

Not so much. At one time, I was very liberal about who I would friend...my boss, co-workers, etc. Then at some point I decided I was going to cull the herd. Took the FB down, blocked a bunch of folks for a variety of reasons (political rants, etc.) and now have a FB where I can keep up w/folks I enjoy knowing. It got tedious to be asked about things I shared that I just thought were funny whether they reflected my personal views or not. I've got things set really private. It is nice to be able to share photos, thoughts w/friends who live far away.

That said, we just put up a FB page for our farm business - it's an easy way to let folks know what we have available product wise, where we'll be, etc. I follow a few people from COTH as I appreciate their posts on here and the link to their FB page is in their COTH sig. One in particular posts the sort of things that just brighten one's day...I get a kick out of seeing the photos of her funny chicken!

[JoZ]

I would guess that's close to 2/3 of my Facebook friends are people I don't know in real life! But some of them are people I consider friends, like a group from a now-defunct horse forum. I've known them for 10 years! Also a few COTHers though I'm bad at matching real name on FB with username on COTH.

I added a lot of unknown people when I used to play Farmville. But over time I have removed a lot of them. The criteria for keeping people as friends however were not based on whether I knew the person but on whether he or she entertained me in some way. So even now my friend list is a real hodgepodge.

[Fox Wood Farm]

As for sending a friend request to someone I totally don't know, I am trying to find the previous owner of a horse I bought in 1976. I found a person with the same name, and sent her a friend request explaining the situation. She was not the correct person, but accepted the friend request anyway.

This is OT but funny - I would LOVE to find the person I SOLD a horse to in 1976!!! But I don't remember her name! You weren't living in Alabama were you? And bought a fire-breathing gray TB mare who was eventing T and ready to move up to P?