Friend requests (particularly from bolshie gentlemen) should be preceded by an introductory e-mail. Manners, innit! Also: I'm really not interested in buying spring water or web space or Jesus. So keep that nonsense away from my inbox. Kthxbai.
Quick thought: I've just noticed that I'm separated by no more than two degrees from, like, every person I've like, ever known, ever. I am aware of this because of Facebook and Myspace. I have friends. I have friends who are friends with people who I know and love and like and have briefly met. I have friends who are friends with people who are friends with people I know who and love and like and have met briefly and even with people I have no desire to see ever again because we either weren't that tight to begin with and misplacing my phone a year or so ago and losing all those numbers was a completely efficient mistake. Or stuff went down (or "dawwwhnnn" as they say on that quaint Elstree Studios set that masquerades as rough East London) and I'd only ever be in your presence again (YOUKNOWWHOYOUARE!) under extreme circumstances. (I.e. you're dying of a unique cancer of the arse karma poetically saw fit to reward you with and I have the cure and you come crawling to me on your knees - which, given your predicament is extremely painful to do - begging for it. Of course I'd say "No", as my face forms itself into the most perfect expression of schadenfreude, ever).
Fanciful digressions aside, it is weird enough knowing that people know people who know people who you know - but not necessarily via you. It is even more bizarre being able to click through URLs and see how these connections are made and played out. What's worse than these minuscule degrees of separation in 'internet networking land' is accepting friend requests from people who I know I'm not actually keen on, but because I have manners - not by choice, moreover because my mother has persistently foisted them on me over the 26 years that have made up my life - I feel obliged to use them and concede to polite acquaintanceship via da interNeTZ. Blah.
Once you're signed up, online socialising functions as a sort of tedious house party and I'm happy to maintain my default position, in the kitchen, atop the counter, making loud, obnoxious jokes, monopolizing the vodka. I don't want to go into the living room and mix it up and risk bumping into a boy 'what did me wrong' or explore upstairs and get cornered by that annoying woman/girl/child who is conspicuously clad in pink and talks so much, so monotonously about herself that even though the distilled ethanol to orange juice ratio in my glass favours the former I still get a vascular headache listening to her.
For sure, technology has caused our world to shrink but it is sort of becoming suffocating. I so, sympathise with Justin Timberlake's falsetto. I too am "ayo, tired of using technology". (ZING!)