(Anti)social media

I have a Face.book account. (Like everyone on the planet, apparently.) I post rarely, though I read it a few times a week. Overall, it's been a fun way to reconnect with people I haven't talked to in years. (I could argue that calling those people "friends" is weird, given that I haven't talked to them in years, but that's for another time.)

Most of the people I'm friends with fall into the following categories:

• People I am friends with, right now
• People I went to school with (college, high school, middle school) that I'd lost touch with
• People I work with or have worked with in the past; primarily people I trust more than I trust the average person I work/worked with

I just got a friend request from a vendor I know through work. A contractor. We've had several phone/e-mail conversations and have been out to lunch once, but that's the extent of our friendship.

Dude, I'm not going to friend you. You are not my friend, in any sense of the word.

I know many people use various forms of social networking for work purposes. That's fine-- but that's why I'm on Linked.In, not Face.book. I do occasionally post personal stuff on the FB, and there's no way in heck I'm going to give a work vendor access to that stuff.

Public. Private. There's a difference.

The nice part about FB is that I can "ignore" his request. And if he ever asks me straight out why I didn't accept the request, I'll be honest: FB is for my personal life, and my work and personal lives do not mix on a regular basis.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to have a pseudonymn, so I wasn't findable to the general public. Something dramatic and mysterious, perhaps. Hm.