Offering friendship: what does it mean?

Sometimes I feel like I'm back in high school (shudder). You remember, when you were trying to figure out what "going with" someone really meant. What exactly were you being asked and what would you be expected to do if you accepted?

I have been offered SL friendship by people who were already my friends in RL, and from SL residents that I really DID want to get to know well. No problem there.

But...

1) I've been offered friendship by perfectly nice people I considered nothing more than casual acquaintances, and I accepted because it seemed too rude to reject them.

2) I've impulsively offered friendship to a (very) few residents who I really liked soon after meeting them, then was left worrying if they'd accepted me just to be polite (see #1 above).

3) I've NOT offered friendship to people that I really liked, and want to get know better, because I was afraid I'd come off as too impulsive (see #2 above) or they would just accept to be polite (see #1 above). I figured they would offer if they liked me, and they didn't, so I didn't, but maybe they were wating for me to offer first.

4) Maybe I should just become a hermit...

Offering friendship is something that happens quite a lot and you don't have to accept all of them. Sometimes ppl offered friendship because they liked to hangout with me which is fine and sometimes I refused simply because being a woman in SL sometimes attracts men (and women) that want your friendship for other reasons. I choose my friends because they helped me out or because I like their personality. Adding a friend is nothing more than just that. When and if you're getting serious with someone there's always a partnership.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I was mistaking friendship for anything other than "just" friendship. I'm quite clear that this is not an offer of romance.

It's more that I'm not sure when it's considered appropriate to declare you want to be someone's friend. The social nuances are hard enough to grasp in RL!

As for SL partnership, oh, don't even go there! My RL partner would take an extemely dim view of that offer! LOL!

I wish they'd just scrap all this silly and childish friendship crap. It often just leads to people feeling offended when you delete them, disable mapping or online notifications.

Does anybody like the friendship feature?

Isn't it just Linden Lab obsessed with social engineering?

Is Philip Linden a closet sociologist?

Why don't bats get dizzy after hanging upside down?

Am I asking too many questions?

Yes!! I do!! It beats trying to remember which of the 20,000 + people online you really want to talk to, be with, etc. It's so much easier than searching for them every time, or hoping you'll bump into them at a club, or whatever.

This whole place is a complex game, social and economic experiment, that's what makes it different from anything else out there.

And I don't know why bats don't get dizzy.

Ask away, 2k...this is Resident Answers after all!!

Max

You can always politely refuse 'thanks I don't know you well enough yet'.

Or, remove them a few weeks later when you've never heard from them since the initial contact. Nobody is told when they are removed anymore (I think they used to get a big blue popup).


There is a way to just exchange cards as well, but I don't do it often and I'm not inworld to check.


I used to just accept, and do monthly purges of my friend list. Now I often politely refuse. I rarely offer, but thats just me


@2K
Yes
not qualified to answer
not qualified to answer
its the way thet're made
not qualified to answer

Bingo. I opt for the passive, cowardly approach of quietly dropping their name. I've purged one name and wondered if the ex-friend would be alerted. Does my name just quietly fade from her list, or are we left with a lop-sided relationship in which I can't even remember her name, but my AVs name still lingers on her Friends list?

Yup, it's just as bad as high school, if not worse. I didn't HAVE friends in high school.

There are several levels of ways to stay in touch with people in SL.

1: Offer them a notecard with your name on it, or any other thing you created. They can use the Creator button on the card or item properties to see your profile, or can look up your name in Search. Can't do much more. Easily forgotten or discarded. They can keep it long after you have forgotten they exist.

2: Offer a calling card. (Right click them, "More" on pie menu, then select "Give Card.) Gives them a direct link to your Profile, and to send you an IM. They can tell if you're on-line by checking the card in their inventory. I can't recall if this is reciprocal - whether you get one from them automaticly, or whether deleting their calling card removes yours from their inventory. (I think it does, in both cases).

3: Offer Friendship, check no permissions. (Right click then and select "Add Friend".) Reciprocal. You both get each other's calling cards, and you both show up in each other's Friends list. You both get notified if the other person goes on-line or off-line. (This can be annoying if they were merely a casual acquailtance, which is why many such offers are declined). They can tell if you're on-line by checking the card in their inventory, or by looking in their Friends list. If you remove them as a Friend, you both get removed from each other's Friends list, and you both keep a calling card for each other.

4: Offer Friendship, check permission to map you: As above, but they can also tell what sim you are in, when you're on-line, and can TP to your location, (Map Stalk you). That is reciprocal ONLY if they also check that permission in their friends list. It used to be that this was always true for a Friend, and the Lindens only recently allowed us to make being mappable a personal choice.

If someone wants to grant you permission to mod their objects, or you want to offer that to them, they have to be a Friend.

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When I met someone new, like a newbie in a sandbox, and I want to allow them to contact me again later, I offer a calling card. Usually in such cases I couldn't care less about being notified every time they go on or off line. If I care about being able to contact them, such as I want to TP somewhere and offer them a TP to join me, I make sure I have a card from them, too. If a casual acquaintance offers me friendship, and if I accept at that time, I may later silently remove them and downgrade that to a calling-card level contact.

Someone I want to meet later, to play with or to do things with, I offer friendship. I also offer Friendship to clients I am actively working on a project for, so we know when we can ask each other questions.

For a close friend, where I would like to know if they happen to be nearby, I'll allow them to map me, and will ask them to return the favor. But I don't offer that to many people, nor do I always expect it to be returned. My own SL Partner is a Friend, and they can map me, but I can't map them. We both have mod rights on each other's things.

When I add a friend or accept friendship I usually write something in their profile to help me remember where and why we became friends. That way I can easily decide if I want to remove them or not.

No it is not reciprocal. If Someone gives you their calling card it does not automatically give them yours. Also, if you exchange cards (both people did the more->give card) and you delete their card from your inventory it does not remove your card from their inventory.

You can turn this notification off in Preferences -> General tab near bottom uncheck 'Show Online Friends Notification'

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I have placed in my profile that people are to ask me before sending a friendship request or the request will be declined. It seems many people do look at profiles because before i put that line in I was getting random friendship requests and now, most times, I do get asked first.

I always ask before I send someone a friendship request. I just feel it's the polite thing to do, even if we have met more then once and talked on more then one occassion.

When someone asks me to be friends with them and we just met I often (depending on the situation) will explain the calling card feature and exchange cards. Later if I keep seeing them at places or events I frequent and we have chatted a few times, then I will often offer friendship.

I don't know if calling cards for people who aren't on the friends list ever did used to show on-line status, but they never have since I've been on SL. They do highlight with "online" if that person is also a "friend" however.

I've used them in the past to start IM conferences with several people, but now that we can just do that from the friends list itself, I'm not sure if they have any practical purpose at all.

Friendship is a lot easier now that there are some controls that go with it. I accept offers, but limit accessibility to online status and mapping to those I actually trust and consider "friends." So, in a way it is little better than a calling card. I also prune the list every couple of months.

But if you do that, then you don't get ANY notifications. And I DO want to know when my mate or other household members are on-line!

I don't think there is any real protocol. I think it's just an individual preference thing.

I had someone today ask for my calling card. Most, though, ask to be friends, and that's fine with me, too. I think it is sort of really about how much you like to keep your lists and things tidy.

I've been able to not worry too much about keeping the friendship list tidy, lol, though I try to keep everything else tidy. Every once in a while I'll check a few I haven't seen in a long time, and if they don't appear in Search, it means they've quit, so I remove them. Otherwise, I don't worry about it.

If I offered friendship and it were rejected, I guess I would just offer the person my calling card and try not to take it personally. I would figure it was just be one of those people who likes to keep their friendship list short and tidy, and/or more meaningful.

coco

I view the function of the friends list the same way I view the function of my AOL/AIM "buddy" list or my IRC "notify" list or my MSN "Whatever the hell that list is called" list.

I don't accept "friendship" offers from people by virtue of the fact that I had a one time, 5 minute chat with them. And frankly, I'm not overly concerned about whether or not they might be offended should I decline the offer. I generally do offer a short and friendly explanation as to why I declined, and usually it's understood.

The friends list, for me, is not the grade school playground "wanna be friends?" thing.. it's a tool to make it handy for those who have a mutual desire for quick access to online status, IM, etc, to be able to do so with minimal fuss.

It does happen, however, that the majority of the people in my friends list, I consider actual friends. Every few weeks I weed the list of those that I haven't communicated with. Every few months, a viewer/grid update will do the weeding on my behalf

I think what "Friendship" means differs based on how old you are in SL. When I first came into SL, it seemed practically everyone I talked to more than 5 minutes, either they offered friendship or I offered. You need to start somewhere and when you are socializing with a group of people who are the same SL age, it makes sense to make friends fairly quickly.

Now that I've been in SL for a handful of months and a gazillion hours, friendship means something different to me. I won't offer friendship unless I really want to be someone's true *friend*. In fact I went through a period of several weeks where I added no friends at all to my list, with the friends I had being sufficient to keep me happily socialized in SL.

Now and then I get a friendship request from someone I've barely exchanged words with (or no words at all!) - these are rejected. However, if I've chatted for a short while with someone new to SL and they offer friendship, and they seem fairly nice, I won't reject a friendship offer even if I doubt there will be a friendship developing. I remember what it was like to be new and there's no need to tarnish their view of SL with a rejection right away. If nothing develops, I will prune the list at a later time.

I will say, friendship has been made a lot easier with the ability to specify who can and can't map. Close friends I let map me and I do find this feature helpful sometimes because I can more easily determine when certain friends are "busy" and vice versa.

Me too, when I was a newbie, I used to offer friendship to other newbies and to the few older residents I happened to meet and that were nice with me.

As pointed out, already, everybody has to start somewhere and if you happen to come in SL without prior knowledge of anybody and if nobody of your RL friends join, that's expecially true.

Unless a friendship offer is sent to me right away before getting to chat a little or unless I realize that I don't like the persong offering, I always accept. At a later stage, I can always remove who obviously does not care about me or who turns into an annoying/disliked person.

When I refuse friendship, I always give a polite reason.

As for offering myself, I hardly do it nowadays, I must really like someone to do it.

Regan,
Jade and Samantha have covered every point I was going to make, except;
I see why Ceera leaves 'notify when friends online' on but I had such a plethora of friends I turned this off.

"A plethora" translates to...?

I've 53 "friends" on my list, the notification so far hasn't been annying since it's pretty quick to come and go.

Anyway a big monitor also helps. I've a 21,3" LCD monitor and the viewing area is so large that the notification does not get into my way

LOL Samantha. The stress was on the word 'had'

I've since culled many of my initial swarm (?) of friends but have not been tempted to turn notification on again. I might try it out now we've approached the subject. Now I've kind of settled in to my virtual existence I might not find it such a distraction I used to.

I don't quite run to your 53 but am glad to number you among them

When I was much newer(still new but been around for 3 months) having someone offer friendship who was willing to help me or if I wanted to exchange things with them that I made,etc was easier then looking them up.
Sometimes perhaps its because I am strange and forgetful but if I have name of someone I haven't heard from them for long time unless they was something special about them I actually forget who they are.
Also I find it incredibly annoying to have list of friends that never talk to me it often reminds of when I played the sims.
In Sims if you don't talk to a friend or have any interaction with for period of time even if they like you they eventually no longer consider you a friend.
Sims also get lonesome just like 1st life people too so does my avatar. When I did nothing but build by myself my boyfriend would come over say they guy looks so lonesome.
Creating content and creating is good but it really stinks if you have no one to share it with.
Part of being friend for me is just like first life, if they person never has time for dealing with me or seem short with me, I figure they don't want to deal with me at all. The same goes with second life.
At one point I just thought I be hermit, but sometimes I really do need other Avatars and people to interact with and I must confess at certain points I actually thought about cancelling my acount because of lack of this.

Tarus, I'd offer friendship to you in a heartbeat...Cleary you have a tremendous sense of humor!

Sorry I meant Regan...lol...hard to offer friendship to anyone if you can't even get their name right!

FD, don't think for a moment you are the only one who does this. When I discovered that rightmost tab in profiles for users own notes on friends it was like manna from heaven.

And I too sometimes glance down my friends list and think 'oh, I ought to say hello to them!'
I enjoyed our chat a couple of weeks back FD and would love to continue.

With the multifarious attractions to keep us occupied in SL it's all to easy to forget sometimes our obligations (and intentions!) to keep friendships alive.

It does help to sort some things out in advance. Quite recently I got a friendship invite out of the blue from someone nowhere near and that I'd never heard of. So I neither accepted nor rejected, but sent an IM saying "who are you?". Then I got a reply saying "Oh, I'm so-and-so on another site" - which was someone I was quite happy to be friends with. But they were new and didn't think of IMing first.

But on other occasions I often feel there's a problem with who offers first. The more junior person is reluctant to offer friendship to the more senior one, and hopes the senior one will go first ...