Policy on friending

[ratatosk_ljbackup]

Some people read a lot into whether someone friends them on livejournal. In the interests of not having people feel bad, here's a vague description of what I do.



I friend people who:

• I like.
  
• I want to at least occasionally read the journals of (if you post only memes and quizzes[1], I might not friend you back even if I love spending time with you in real life). I do, in fact, use filters for reading my friends page -- I have a handful of people who I friended but don't read often.
  
• I feel like I know something about.
  

That last bit is almost always only achievable by meeting me and talking at least once, because I find that a real conversation in person is worth months or years of livejournal posts (I have made at least two three exceptions). In order to feel like I know enough about someone to feel comfortable friending them, I look for some combination of these:

• Desires or hopes
  
• Demonstrations of how you connect to other people (e.g. showing that you genuinely like another person, and why)
  
• Creativity, on a large or small scale (anything from deliberate art to a clever little idea or choice of words)
  
• Demonstrations of how you think
  

This is why you might have known me in person for years and never gotten friended back, despite the fact that I sometimes meet people at parties and then friend them after talking to them for an hour.

A good way to make me like you is to take an idea that I am toying with, and toy with it yourself in the same spirit with which I started. A few things will give you some automatic bonus points (e.g. association with CTY or The University of Chicago, or playing the french horn), but they will never be enough by themselves.

I might not get around to reading your journal often if you friend me, but I will look at it at least once in a rare while, depending on what is in it. Commenting in my journal is a great way to get my attention, and you absolutely have permission to do that if you have anything you want to say. It also encourages me to avoid friends-locking marginally private entries. Everyone also has permission to friend me, to link to public entries or comments I make, and to comment anonymously if they like (I do not log IPs and do not expect to in the future). If you go through the entire archive of my journal since 2001, or if you comment on those entries or answer old polls, I will be cool with it and feel flattered, not stalked. Some people are unbelievably high-strung about these things, so I thought maybe I should be explicit.

Commenting is especially helpful if I already know you in real life and would friend you back, except that I either don't know you just friended me, or can't figure out who you are! I also like it when people explain how they got to my journal. I have had people friend me and unfriend me without ever identifying themselves or telling me why they friended me -- presumably they were offended.



[1] Someone once said that anyone who thinks telepathy sounds like a good idea should be forced to read the livejournals of a thousand teenage girls.

Comments

You lied about the AIM name...

[faerieboots.livejournal.com]

*sniff*

No stalking for me.

[winters-edge.livejournal.com]

I like the way you expressed your thoughts on friending, as well as other things. It's my hope that you won't mind my having added you to my friends list so I can read more in the future. I'll completely understand not being friended back.

My journal appears to be new, but I am not actually new to Live Journal. I moved from one account to another to avoid future drama. That story will be told soon...it's hardly what one would think of in terms of LJ and drama, though.

Enjoy life as you have been. :)

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

You are absolutely welcome to friend me (and to comment on entries, even!). I'm always flattered by people friending me.

Do I know you in real life? Is that a good puzzle to have me work on? :) It seems like there is a good chance that I have at least met you.

[winters-edge.livejournal.com]

If I work through links on biopages, it seems possible we could have met, or, perhaps, encountered each other less directly. There's a familiarity I cannot peg as of yet.

On an related-but-not note, I saw a Victrola with an almost-black finish like mine while researching that question. I've always thought mine was mahogany, and now if I should ask the oldest family member if she knows for certain... :)

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

Oh, then how did you find my journal? Why did you decide to friend me?

I used this tool to figure out if I knew you: http://www.livejournal.com/tools/sixdegrees.bml

It's really hard to say. CTY, University of Chicago, random people from MIT, random poly people in Boston and NYC, large parties in the Boston area... would any of these do? You don't have to answer here if you are protecting your privacy -- it looks like you did some fleeing from angst, which I respect.

[winters-edge.livejournal.com]

Interest search: architecture. You had me with espallied tomatoes. Have you done that? I've done nearly that- I use them annually to create a privacy screen over the wrought iron railing of our patio. I use the same basic concept with indeterminate vines (yellow pear, actually) and it works fantastically.

I've found it's amazingly simple in cases like these to answer and protect your privacy. It's the people you don't expect to be looking for dirt you have to watch out for.

Lived in Wisconsin and enjoyed visiting Chicago, live in the Northeast now and enjoy Boston and also have met some artists from the area at cons, etc, and I'm not horribly far from NYC, so I get there sometimes, too. Some of my friends are poly, some not, so I suspect we just may travel in concentric circles. :)

That's a tool I hadn't played with before- I'll have to bookmark it!

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

"Espaliered tomatoes" is actually a name I picked entirely because I like the sound of the phrase. It has no signifigance whatsoever. In a horrible ironic twist, several months after I adopted it, I developed a severe nightshade allergy. Go figure.

I've never tried to espalier anything, but I have, in fact, used vines as a screen around a porch railing. :) I used cypress vine, cardinal climber, some sort of ornamental bean, and moonflowers a few years ago (I might be misremembering names). Since then I have been moving too frequently to grow anything that would last all summer.

[earthdragon.livejournal.com]

French horn is hard, I lasted about a year in middle school. I could never produce notes on tune.

[steluch.livejournal.com]

hi. i came to your journal to look at an entry that i'm now going to assume is locked because i don't see it...i'm (among other things) enf's girlfriend...you've interacted with me in person on your past two trips to the bay area...i think i've followed comments you've made to enf or zahl back to your journal before without realizing who you are in real life, but now that i have determined who you are i'll probably be more inclined to see what you are up to...

[subsiding-leaf.livejournal.com]

Hi,

I've obviously found your comment on my LJ. :) Sorry for sounding like a complete doofus when I called today, I'm kind of incoherent on the phone.

I am afraid the apartment is really too expensive for me, upon consideration... I hope you find someone less constrained by budget who will probably be cooler to spend time with than I would be anyway, since all I kind of do is buy too many books and jabber about them.

Apropos of nothing, you take really lovely pictures. AND you like Dinosaur Comics. AND you know Alice & Julia. I feel those three combined make for excellent recommendations to your character, etc.. :)

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

Darn! Good luck, then!

I was unaware I had any Dinosaur Comics references in my LJ anywhere. I _do_ read it, so it's probably unintentional.

In any case, flattery will get you everywhere, of course -- thank you! :)

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Owait. If you know wispfox, then you probably know all the people I know in Boston, and then some. So you'll have to keep looking for hiking buddies, I guess. Fraw.

[nevacaruso.livejournal.com]

*nods* You've really thought this through, haven't you? All understood.

This is Annie. We met at rigel's party. I'm friending you, as promised.

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

I actually managed to friend you back _before_ getting this comment emailed to me. :) (you can set it up to email you when various things happen)

[leahseraph.livejournal.com]

I wonder if we've ever met in person. You are curious in that you are connected to both ariiadne and rigel, as well as the CTY thing (your post about the directory is what brought me here, as the name looked familiar). Whee bicoastal social incest!

(Alternatively, there are about 17 people in the world, and most of them are on the internet.)

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Thought you might be amused, perhaps startled, to know that "Ratatosk" has appeared in mainstream media: http://www.boston.com/sports/nesn/wilbur/sports_blog/blog/2007/08/30/rodent_foreboding/

[aryll.livejournal.com]

Found you from faerieboots's journal. Totally adore squirrels of all sorts, so your name caught my eye, and your journal did the rest. Friending you because you seem quite interesting and awesome. :)

Intro

[beccapecnik.livejournal.com]

Hello Mr. Bad Idea. I was pointed to your journal. After reading a bit and cackling with general glee, I added you as a friend. I give comment to prod you with a digital stick.

A Becca