(Romantic) "blasts from the past" on professional social media - do you accept or move on? (married, women)
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If it isn't CD, it's other social media. Dang. I found I couldn't navigate LinkedIn the way I'd like, so I started a profile. I was not looking to fill it out much and kept it sketchy. I was more interested in finding college friends I LIKED.
The first invite comes in and it's from a dude in college I couldn't stand. I declined it. I then decided to send an invite to a girl I dated freshman year, who was very "open book" to begin with. She accepted, and we transferred over our "catching up" onto FB. It's been great. She's happily married, BTW.
I just sent out another invite. I knew this woman mostly junior and senior year of college, and have studied and had lunch with her. She was Slavic and had brownish/blonde hair, exotic almost almond-shaped green eyes, and was kind of shy, but smart, so far away from the stereotypical SoCal bimbo. She remained single for a long time and is now married. Basically, my message was something like: 'Hi (name): Looks like you're in SoCal, married, and doing well. Your FB is more locked up than Ft. Knox. I don't blame you. A lot of changes for me, geographically and work wise. Just saying hi/sending invite.'
Was I off base? Would a woman wig out, or just think it's a friendly not-too-intrusive approach? What would most men do in reciprocal circumstances? I know that, if I had a neutral to positive opinion of a person, I would accept. It isn't a vehicle to romance. Let's get real.
I think its a nice gesture of friendship and catching up with old class mates. Why anyone man or women would ignore or choose to read more into than that... beyond me.
I think its a nice gesture of friendship and catching up with old class mates. Why anyone man or women would ignore or choose to read more into than that... beyond me.
Ok, since my "invite" was accompanied by a very clinical message, and it was professional social media, how about on basic Facebook? What do most people do? Do most people accept a friend request from a past classmate who they may have gone out with, and they are now married and geographically distant? Is there a typical protocol or rule of thumb?
Her FB page, easily found because of a unique surname, is one of those that is a hollow shell, and the toggles on the right for friend/message are all locked up, as in Ft. Knox (jokingly), per my Linkedin message to her. When I see this, I see a person who basically wants access to Facebook, but only wants to use it as a voyeur and not be reachable.
My professional network is my professional network and my social network is my social network. There is very little overlap. The only people who are on both are people I stayed friends with after leaving a job.
Quote:
Originally Posted by robertpolyglot
Ok, since my "invite" was accompanied by a very clinical message, and it was professional social media, how about on basic Facebook? What do most people do? Do most people accept a friend request from a past classmate who they may have gone out with, and they are now married and geographically distant? Is there a typical protocol or rule of thumb?
Her FB page, easily found because of a unique surname, is one of those that is a hollow shell, and the toggles on the right for friend/message are all locked up, as in Ft. Knox (jokingly), per my Linkedin message to her. When I see this, I see a person who basically wants access to Facebook, but only wants to use it as a voyeur and not be reachable.
Or maybe she only wants to use it for family and friends who are actually involved in her life, or she has a stalker or a sick ex out there who is stealing her friends' photos and pretending to be them to "friend" her so he can snoop. It happens. Just because you can't see someone's friends and their page is locked up, that doesn't mean they don't use the site for interaction. Also, with the way employers are, I can't blame people for keeping their Facebook pages close to the vest. There are too many people out there looking to make a stink about someone wearing a bikini or holding a drink. And given all the security issues with Facebook and how they toss your personal information about, forget it.
I gave friending old flames a shot on FB by accepting their requests when they came in (I didn't send requests to them), and after a while, I just didn't feel comfortable with it and I got rid of most of them. I felt like THEY were the voyeurs. I got the sense that had I gained 60 pounds and lost my looks, they would never have contacted me. It just didn't feel right.
Your mileage may vary. There are plenty of people in this world who would love to hear from old flames, for assorted reasons from catching up to hooking up. I'm not one of them.
Problem with those kinds of sites is that it is too easy to cheat on your spouse with someone from one of those site... someone you haven't seen in 20 yrs contacts you....
IDK.... I have had contact with ex's recently, but I made sure to do it in front of mrs. chow..... just to keep things above board....
One of the ladies kept sorta flirting with me... I had to keep injecting Mrs. Chow into our conversation to
"remind" her that I was taken......
These, too. Robert, you may have come off as the voyeur, wanting to pry into her life.
Sure, who doesn't want to see what one looks like and is doing? That's what FB has done. It gave us an instant 20-> year reunion, so to speak. And, I'd call it just looking, if it was a brief tour of what they're up to. With a lot of people, you can see what they now look like, what they're doing, any significant others/family, and maybe part of a Hawaii trip, and that's about it. If it's an "oh, ok" visit and not repeated ones drooling or obsessing, I think it stays out of the voyeuristic ranks. The only people's FBs, with whom I'm NOT friends, but are usually common friends, I've actually visited are those who put up cool new travel pictures periodically or comic posts, so it's not even about the person, then.
Yeah, but burg said it in a funny way ... 'you're trying to get into her FB' ... the 'trying to get into' makes for a funny visual. I might have gotten a LinkedIn response had I not made the "Ft Knox" comment, which probably made her paranoid, but she has always known I was a smart ass. But doesn't everybody do that, we sort of go down the list of everybody we went to college with and haven't seen, and approach them on social or professional media? But some can and some can't/shouldn't mix professional media with social media, as I did in this case.
Last edited by robertpolyglot; 11-17-2012 at 12:39 PM..
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