Feeling Unsociable

Every now and then, I have a Facebook friend request from someone I don't know. I'm sure you've gotten one of these on occasion. Its from someone you've never heard of, and your response is a straightforward 'ignore', or if you're feeling charitable, an email asking "how exactly do you know me?", which never prompts a response.

But what do you do when someone you know but not terribly well or perhaps don't even like sends you a friend request? What's the proper social networking etiquette when you don't particularly feel like being sociable?

I'm afraid I knuckle under. Always. I know that's not what I want to do, but it seems the best of several poor alternatives.

So far, everyone who's sent me a friend request from my past has been a real pleasure to reconnect with. I've re-established friendships with dear people and we've gone out and done things together, and that's been remarkable and good.

But its not the people in my past I want to avoid. Its the people in my present. The people I have little in common with, who I don't have philosophical agreement with, the ex-co-worker now embroiled in controversy I don't understand and don't want to be dragged into or the ex-boyfriend of an acquaintance who wants to 'hang out' and get a 'falafel' some day next week.

I don't usually equate getting a falafel from a tiny hole-in-the-wall with one table on Sullivan Street with "hanging out". First, there's no place to 'hang' and second, who IS this insta-friend that now wants to be buds via facebook? Where did this guy, whose name I don't remember and whose number I was careful not to take, find the memory cells to remember my name and put it together with Facebook?

Honestly, what do *you* do? This is the new social conundrum; a real-life acquaintance who didn't even register when you met them, who now wants to be your online bff. How do you decline sociability in the world of social media?