@Social Apology

Being who I am, I get a lot of friend requests from people I don't  really know, people I never met in person.  Usually it's people who know me through a friend, or just some obscure band trying to establish a fan base.  Once in a while I'll get a friend request from someone who actually shares some social setting with me, and that setting we share is usually a class.  Being asked for social network friendship by a classmate requires another standard of etiquette.  My usual reaction is one of, "Oh sure, we can be friends."   But honestly, I'm always asking myself why this person felt the need to seek out my Facebook or MySpace page.  Having many friends on a social network, just for the sake of having 300 plus friends, is all well and good if you're not paying attention to those 300 plus friends.  However, I've found that some people are just plain problematic, and when I write problematic, I mean they are just always having problems.

I had one such friend on both MySpace and Facebook, and we'll call her Sharon (this was not a popular GenY name, and I have yet to meet a Sharon under the age of 35, so I feel safe to use it as a pseudonym for one of my peers).  Sharon and I had exactly one class together, before, after or during which we never really conversed.  I honestly have no recollection of why we became connected via social networks, but I'd attribute the Facebook friendship to the old adage,  "Stuff happens."    I don't want to run the risk of being outlandish and imply that Sharon is a nutcase, but  in all likelihood, she probably is.  All summer my home page feed  contained a daily message about how Sharon's current relationship was going, and I was privy to such information as, "His favorite is Neapolitan ice cream, omg! I love chocolate."  After a while it started getting difficult to summon the effort to do more than glance at Sharon's status (which was constantly changing). 

As time passed, things obviously changed for Sharon.  One day in a bored stupor, I actually read Sharon's status message, and it read, "That guy I was dating hasn't called me, I'm looking at this razor blade [sic]."  I'm no therapist, and nor would I pretend to understand the urge to cut yourself with a razor blade (I'll keep my self-damaging behaviors to those that don't leave scars, things like binge drinking without getting behind the wheel of a car never hurt anything other than my liver).  

Because of my lack of experience with such matters, I decided to continue to semi-ignore Sharon's statuses.  However, my curiosity was piqued at this point, and I began to follow.  A few days later, I'm reading, "My arm stings from the cuts, he still hasn't called [sic]."  I like to think of myself as a good person, so I justify not trying to contact Sharon about her obvious cry for attention by telling myself, "Well if she really is a suicidal type, her true friends and family would see that she's advertising problematic behavior to the whole world, and they will provide the poor girl with the help she needs."  I'm currently wondering if they ever did.

About 3 days after reading the status about the "cuts," I ran into Sharon at a club/bar downtown.  My initial reaction was to inquire about her stinging cuts, but possessing some kind of inherent social decorum, I felt like I shouldn't.  However, some kind of natural curiosity didn't stop me from looking for any cut marks on Sharon's arms.  Surprisingly enough, I didn't see one, and the girl was wearing a sleeveless shirt.  I started asking myself why anyone would make up something like that.  I came to the conclusion that Sharon was probably lying on her status just to get attention.  Once I had decided this, I had to ask her about it.  It turns out that I was right; the girl has never cut herself, and she also professed not empathizing with anyone who ever would. 

The whole encounter left me dumbfounded.  Upon returning home, I quickly deleted Sharon as a friend on all social networks.   At this point I honestly think it's best not to befriend someone you barely know on social networks, especially if that person is going to put you into an awkward situation.  Social networks can be an issue solely because they allow us to take on a persona.  The sane girl who is feeling down because a romantic flame has been extinguished becomes the cutter in that Lifetime movie that aired last week, or a guy, who just turned 21, and grudgingly found himself still single, is now supposedly drinking (way more than he actually is) because he is pining over his ex.  If you don't actually know these people, why should you care?  Since I am admittedly self-rather absorbed, I'm going to say you shouldn't.