Reverse Privacy

Accepting a friend request is no longer a question of whether or not I want him or her to see my profile – it’s now a question of whether or not I care to see theirs. Lately, when I receive a friend request, I’ve begun asking myself, “Do I really care about this person’s status updates, photo updates, active applications, or what they’re doing with their life at all?” If the answer is no, I’ll usually ignore the friend request.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I can’t decide. On the one hand, my desire to keep my news feed interesting and relevant to me is forcing me to only become friends with people I actually want to hear about. On the other hand, I’m ignoring friend requests from people that I know, simply because there’s no way to say, “Yeah, I know this person, but I don’t actually care about them.”

And, speaking of reverse privacy, here’s another conundrum. I’m not so much worried about someone stalking me, as I am about the time I spend stalking other people. Sure if someone’s bothering me I can block them and then poof! It will be as if my profile doesn’t even exist. But what about the reverse? Where is the safeguard that lets me remove someone else’s profile from my own experience? Please! Protect me from myself!!!