Happy to make your acquaintance...

[tzikeh]

A question for everyone - when new people friend you, or you friend new people, do you take time and browse a bunch of their past lj entries, or do you just friend/get friended and go forward from there?

And speaking of friendslists: since the joule script at marnanel was hacked, I haven't been checking on friendings for a bit. I finally got to it again this morning.

:blinks:

Hi, lots of new people! Howaya?

If you want to know way too much about me, you can check out my 100 Things About Me entry, from back when that meme was making the rounds. One or two references are slightly out of date, but whatever.

**Usual ridiculous "friending policy" disclaimer here - I can hardly keep up with my current reading list, if I don't add you right now it doesn't mean I don't like you, blah blah blah pointlessdiscomfortcakes. Just like most everyone else out there, my friends list is malleable and people get added or removed at various times for various reasons.**

Comments

[taraljc.livejournal.com]

I usually take a look at their current journal entries, and their interests, as well as who else lists them as friends.

Of course, I also have a truly terrifying list of friends and folks who've friended me. So I guess when you're looking at numbers over 200, "there's always room for one more" seems somehow appropriate...

Yup. I'm a freak. But then, that's what filters are for...

Friending

[kimberlyfdr.livejournal.com]

When I decide to friend someone, I look through their old posts BEFORE I friend them to see what the majority of their posts deal with. Let's say I find someone who lists Star Trek as an interest and that's what drew me to their LJ. If I look at their posts and all of them deal with Smallville, then I will reconsider friending them. It's not that I'm against their LJ, it's just that I was drawn to a particular interest that we shared and that's not the direction they wanted to take currently in their LJ.

When friending someone who friends me, I usually do it blindly. I look at their journal, but 99% of the time it's an automatic friending back.

[tv-elf.livejournal.com]

If it isn't someone I met through another friend's journal, then I usually check their friend's list and last few entries. I've also been known to ask friends off-journal who people are...

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

I always check if they are not known to me. If the person is writing about how the stalking charges have been dropped - it was her evil twin sister, not her who sent those nasty e-mails, I may reconsider friending back.

[laurakaye.livejournal.com]

When new people friend me, I generally don't notice, actually. I don't do reciprocal friending and I don't check my list but about once a month or so.

When I friend someone new I sometimes go back if they talk about something I need to be filled in on, but usually I just go from the date of friending.

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

Even though I usually friend back, I browse anyway, mostly because I am suspicious of trolls in the HP fandom. If there are no entries and no indication that the LJ is a real person, I don't friend back right away. But if someone is a SV or Buffy fan with no hint of HP I'm more likely to friend back after skimming down the journal to make sure they aren't a Neo-Nazi or something.

[nomadicwriter]

I don't friend many people - I only use the list as a regular reading list, and it's not as if I ever put anything under friendslock, so aside from feeds and recs journals, there's really only a handful of people on it.

If somebody friends me, I'll always go and read at least the most recent page of entries. (As soon as I notice, anyway, which may take weeks 'cause I'm not very observant. Case in point, I just checked my list right now and hey, there's somebody new on it.) I tend to only friend people back if I see they write a lot about my regular fandoms, or something else I'm really interested in.

Of course, this leaves me with an irrationally guilty desire to explain my friending policy whenever somebody adds me and I don't add back. So I caved and put a note in my bio in the end.

This would be so much easier if lj would only give you a separate friends list and reading list. I have people "friended" who I've never spoken to, and people I consider friends who aren't on the list because they only write about fandoms I'm not part of.

[destina.livejournal.com]

If someone friends me, I check out their journal and I friend them if: they are into Stargate, writing or vidding; they are funny and or/clever; they give off a warm, welcoming vibe; they are someone I know who's just now getting with the LJ program; or they are so meta it hurts.

My friends list is too long as it is, so having a yardstick is essential these days. Not like the old days, when I friended everyone back. Now I'm thinking of culling my friends list, and the hit list is easy: people who cry poormouth all the time, people who hit 10 on the immature-o-meter, people who post only quizzes, and people who post only about fandoms I know nothing about or have left in the dust. Oh, and people who annoy me on a regular basis. But that one's less easy to quantify. *g*

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

It's a mixed bag. I automatically check out the journal of people who friend me. And, unless we have absolutely nothing in common, I usually friend back

Occasionally, I check out my friends' friend list.

People I've known from elsewhere in fandom I'll at least check out.

[meri-oddities.livejournal.com]

If I'm going to friend someone, I read thier journal and decide if they are interesting or not. If someone friends me, I still read thier journal, but I friend them anyway, interesting or not. I will friend someone who is actually a friend, but if they don't friend me back, unless they are really interesting, I unfriend them.

I suspsect I think too much about this concept.

[the-star-fish.livejournal.com]

I always always always read the back posts before friending if it's someone I haven't met in RL or know from elsewhere -- there are a few people who've friended me that I haven't friended back just because I frankly don't see that much of interest in their posts. (The one time I made an exception to this and friended blindly I got someone who had excellent grammar, spelling, and sentence structure, but bitched, moaned and whined five times a day. Blergh.) It's quite possible that reads as selfish, but I've honestly only got so many brain cells, and I hate to waste them ... *g*

[ano-mea.livejournal.com]

Hi back!

*waves shyly*

Hi!

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Don't be shy! C'mon in!