I notice that a lot of people will come to Menewsha from Gaia and then say stuff like "Friend me on Gaia!" They usually say that without even getting to know you, it's just a knee jerk reaction to finding out that you have an account on Gaia.

Heck, most of the time they won't even talk to you first! Their intro posts sound something like this: "I'm from Gaia! Friend me over there!" Why would I want to friend you over there if I don't even know you here? For that matter, shouldn't you be asking to be added on Menewsha? Obviously we're both here on Menewsha, so why can't we be friends here? It just boggles my mind.

Let's discuss this odd phenomena!
- Why do people come to Mene but want to be friended on Gaia by a bunch of strangers?
- If you have an account in both places, do you friend your Mene friends on Gaia and vice versa? Do you even talk to Mene friends on Gaia?
- What is so awesome about a Gaia friendlist that people seem compelled to add every stranger they come across to their list?
- Tell us about your friending policies. How do you decide who gets to be a friend or not?

I've seen that too, and I don't understand it. Did they join Mene just to find more people to add on Gaia?

I've never been a person to add or accept friend requests from strangers, be it on Gaia or Mene. For me, the whole point of the friend list is to have a list of my buddies on hand when I need it. It'd be pointless if I flooded that list with strangers. For others, I suppose it's an indicator of popularity.

Perhaps Gaia is like MySpace or Bebo where some people will strangers for no reason, but Mene is like Facebook because they'll only add people they know. XD

My friending policy.. .I ussually only add people who I have had a good conversation with on more than one occasion.. I really do hate that people just add people that they don't know. I mean I kind of understand when new people here do it because they want friends on their list that they can go to later but people who have been on either site for a while should have people that they actually "know" in their friends list..

I do have a couple of Mene friends on my Gaia account and we say hi on both sites almost everyday :D I think it's ind of funny but for the most part we talk on Mene- mainly because I spend more time here.

ANother thing, I used to be compelled to add every rich looking person I saw when I first started gaia about two years ago. Which in the end worked to my benefit because I had a lot of friends who donated to me XD But now I hardly ever add people and I keep my friends list very small because I only keep people who talk to me consistently.. The sad thing right now is that there are only like 3 people on my friends list that have been there since the begining.

I turn down all random friend requests. I don't want a million people on my friend list, I want friends! People I actually talk to! And we can't just talk once and bam! Friends for life! We have to talk a few times consistently before I accept the request or make one. If I haven't talked to someone for a year or if they haven't signed in for about a year, I take them off my friendlist. If I can't remember why they're there, I'll trim them off as well.

I've had a few people from Mene friend me on Gaia, but we never talked on Gaia. In fact, it was after an event and we don't even talk here on Mene anymore. So it felt kind of silly to bother.

I rarely set out to friend people and I've certainly never gone after rich people XD In fact, when I would greet newbies, I'd hide my gold level to sort of prevent people attempting to friend a "rich" person.

I never did understand why people feel the need to add a hoard of random people they never talk to onto their friend list. I always talk to the person, getting to know him/her, before I feel it's worth a friend request. It's also a strange policy of mine to never add anyone. Never. I stopped adding people many years ago. I always wait for the other person to send me a request. Unless the person happens to be some super awesometastic person that I simply cannot resist and would eat myself away if I didn't.

It has always annoyed me how many people randomly throw friend requests at me when in Towns on Gaia. They don't even TALK. They just walk by, pause, send a request over, and continue walking. Seriously, what the fuck?

It's also strange for the 'Anyone from Gaia? Add me! I'm xxxx' on Menewsha (or just about any site, really). While I understand the 'group' feeling that many people would like to be a part of, to have something in common or belong to, it really doesn't have to reach the point of needing to add all the people you see on Mene that has a Gaia account onto your Gaia friend list...Or Menewsha friend list if you happen to run across someone on Gaia who has one, the moment you see that they come from a site you come from too. Shouldn't you get to know the person first? What if it turns out the other person was an asshole or total jerk? What if the two of you rubbed each other the wrong way? What if the other person is a scammer or hacker? You don't know any of these things and yet you add them, just because they come from a site you go to. It's just plain weird, IMHO.

I apologize if I sound like I'm ranting, or if any of my post contents unintentionally offends anyone.

xD

This is some kind of internet culture I think, but only for people who are fairly young I'd say. I get a lot of random friend request from people, people who never even post or ever come back after they sign up...it depends on how nice I'm feeling whether I accept them or not, but I do go through my friendlist occasionally and remove all the people that I don't actually know.

It certainly does amuse me that certain people have the "add me :D" mentality, because you can bet your life that if a complete stranger approached that person in the street and asked to be their friend they'd think they were crazy or they'd be scared, but they do it themselves online and get huffy when people reject them ><

People do that on other sites too. I guess they want more gaia friends but you would think they would ask to be friends here as well. I don't friend people like that, since I don't know them. My friend adding policy is kinda like what Jellysundae does. I have added random people if I felt like being nice but I might delete people I never talk to because it's kinda pointless to have people like that on your friendlist.

I don't friend anyone I don't know at least a little from chatting with, here or on Gaia. I can't understand why someone would friend a person on one site and not the other, though. Are they leading some sort of whacked-out double life on the internet or something? Weird.

The irony of this, of course, is that I only joined Menewsha after enduring a lot of prodding from a Gaian friend. His avatar on Gaia never changes, while mine changes daily. Every time I'd bug him about it, he'd shrug and say "I do that on Menewsha, not here. Go join and you can see me change my avatar."

So I mainly came over here to stalk him and watch his avatar change. Wheee.

Still doesn't mean I'm going to be pestering anyone I meet on Menewsha for their Gaia information.

When I first joined on Mene and us newbies were roaming around the newbie-forum trying to figure things out a lot of us would friend each other.

I think the whole "Hey I'm from Gaia too, add me!" mentality is finding someone whom they have a similarity with and just getting something from that (a friend). It's similar to maybe being out of town and finding a stranger who is from the same state/city as you. Most people are compelled to talk to them and generally be more friendly towards. Of course, this isn't always the case, but I've seen it happen plenty of times. :P

I accept requests from anyone. XD; I tend to get a fair amount from new users, probably because of the gold guide sticky. I figure I'd be happy to be their friend and help them out if they need it. However, usually I never hear from them beyond that.

Friends lists don't really mean anything to me since I already have a good idea of who my friends are, so I suppose that's why I don't turn down random requests.

That just boggles my mind. I don't see why they need to add complete strangers. I only ever add people that I speak to. I didn't make any friends on gaia as I was only there for a day before leaving again and the people who write the "add me on gaia" I just tend to ignore their requests, if they want to be my friend they have to speak to me first. I do sometimes add people from other sites I am a member of on here but only if I was a good friend with them on another site, if not I just re-make them on here :D

Just goes to show that some people really do behave in an entirely different way online to how they do in real life. In a really odd way! lol

I don't add random people myself; I'm very self-conscious, which is probably why the only friend I have added on here is someone who added /me/ in the first place xD

I usually only add people I'm friends with in real life, or friends with on other sites.

In regards to accepting random requests for friends, yeah, I do. It's not a popularity thing. I could care less if people looked at my friends list and said, hey, that person has loads of online friends! For me it's just that not many people bother randomly requesting me, since I don't do anything that is particularly exciting to make people want to request me. If I get a friend request period, it's usually not something that happens often, so why not? For me it's just a person showing interest, for some reason or another, in being my friend.

If that person ends up not bothering with me ever again, I do a friend list cleanout and remove them. But sometimes, people just... want a friend or they think you're cool for whatever reason and so they add you. And sometimes you actually do get to be friends after that. And, like I said - if they don't bother with you again after a long time, delete them. It seems nicer to me than just rejecting them. I guess if I got swamped with random requests, I'd feel differently, buuut since I don't... it doesn't bother me.

On sites like facebook or something, it does kind of creep me out. Especially when the person requesting you couldn't have seen you anywhere and sounds like a stalker. Part of the reason why I avoid those networking sites like the plague now D;

I accept any friends requests given to me because I'm HOPING those people will talk to me privately or in my comments and that I can become better friends with them. But usually, unfortunately, they don't and I have to delete them after awhile. It makes me sad because I never actually make any friends on avatar sites. I just post on the main forums and hope someone reads my posts and that I can strike up a conversation with them.

But the big reason I randomly request people and accept them on Gaia is that it's the biggest forum on the internet (did you know that?) of ANY forum and so many people come and go on there and make threads that you never see the same person twice, EVER on there. I don't recognize anyone on there at all whenever I post, except for those random weird popular people on there that people love to make threads mocking and because of that, I always accept friend requests and seek for them even from strangers. Hopefully I can get familiar with some people on there in some way instead of being lost in this HUMONGOUS pool of people.

On here, it's not nearly as big of deal. People aren't posting constantly and there's not threads being constantly made every second. On Gaia if you don't get your thread replied to once every minute, then it disappears onto the next page. On here, threads stick around for awhile and most of the people you see are regulars, so you start recognizing their faces and their avatars.