Social Networking (Facebook, MySpace, etc)

I think your gut is saying no. I felt guilty ignoring some friend requests but I know it's for the best!

I think your gut is saying no.

I agree!

I also have some that I neither ignore nor accept for the same reason. It's important to listen to yourself. And I have use security settings! I feel funny about even friending people at all - unless there's some extensive background or link.

yup!  I have  people  hanging  in  oblivion as well.  don't accept  or ignore..because  they just don't matter that  much  right now  or ever did..

My only Facebook friends are people I know in real life.  So far only a couple people from my past that I wouldn't really have sought myself have requested to be my friends.  I accepted them because I didn't really have any reason to block them, but they haven't posted to me much and I don't post to them.  I'm guessing they just wanted to check my photos and see generally where I was and what I was doing.  I suppose it may still backfire on me at some point though.

I wasn't a fan of FB at first but I now have 2 accounts. One personal and one for my writing. It is easier to use than Myspace (though i still have one of those as well) Only thing I wish they could implement would be the ability to update it via my twitter posts lol

Only thing I wish they could implement would be the ability to update it via my twitter posts lol

You can, via the Selective Tweet Status.
http://apps.facebook.com/selectivetwitter/

I can never get the selective twitter to work for me Ah well. Will continue to update both.

does anyone regularly  'clean house'  and get rid of people  who they don't talk  to  often  or have grown  tired of?  has it backfired?

does anyone regularly  'clean house'  and get rid of people  who they don't talk  to  often  or have grown  tired of?  has it backfired?

I've done this in the past and haven't had any negative things happen as a result...I am about to do it again because of all the anti-immigrant smack some of my British friends have been jacking their jaws about in the past couple of days.

I haven't really because I've had once or twice where I figured out that I'd been dropped by people I thought were friends and it really hurt.  It may be that they didn't just drop me for personal reasons, but I don't want to ask.  I don't want to put someone into a similar position who may read more into it than I intended.

I have had a few people who were offensive or just added me to spam their business ideas though, and I didn't feel bad about blocking or cleaning them off my lists.

As far as simplifying my FB friends, I've taken the time to add the categories and whenever I add a friend, I figure out which category fits them and make that part of adding them.  Then if I need to find a more manageable chunk of my friends I can just go into Uni, Idaho, high school, New York, church, work, etc and pull up whoever fits in the respective group.

does anyone regularly  'clean house'  and get rid of people  who they don't talk  to  often  or have grown  tired of?  has it backfired?

I've done it.  I don't feel badly about it.  I've gotten rid of people who never respond to my comments on their walls and never leave comments or anything on mine, so what's the point?  I've gotten rid of a couple annoying people who put a zillion updates all the time.  Others who are sometimes annoying but whose feelings I don't want to hurt because I do like them I have just hidden.  I've gotten rid of people who I thought I'd get closer to but it hasn't happened.

edited to add:  I haven't deleted anyone from UK-Y, it's mostly people from my past in the US who I've gotten rid of....

I haven't really because I've had once or twice where I figured out that I'd been dropped by people I thought were friends and it really hurt.  It may be that they didn't just drop me for personal reasons, but I don't want to ask.  I don't want to put someone into a similar position who may read more into it than I intended.

I have had a few people who were offensive or just added me to spam their business ideas though, and I didn't feel bad about blocking or cleaning them off my lists.

As far as simplifying my FB friends, I've taken the time to add the categories and whenever I add a friend, I figure out which category fits them and make that part of adding them.  Then if I need to find a more manageable chunk of my friends I can just go into Uni, Idaho, high school, New York, church, work, etc and pull up whoever fits in the respective group.

Me too.

yup!  I have  people  hanging  in  oblivion as well.  don't accept  or ignore.

OK, I feel really bad now.  I am new to Facebook, and I received a friend request from someone that I didn't want to be friends with.  I thought that by clicking "ignore" I would just be sort of hiding her request so that I wouldn't accidentally add her to my friends by mistake (worried I would do this on my iphone, where I often hit the wrong button with my fat fingers).  But does this mean that she receives a rejection email from Facebook?  What does the email say?  I figured that "ignore" would equal limbo but I have a sinking feeling that it really means "reject" and I certainly didn't want to hurt her feelings!  This is a girl who was suicidal in high school.  Have I totally screwed up?!!

OK, I feel really bad now.  I am new to Facebook, and I received a friend request from someone that I didn't want to be friends with.  I thought that by clicking "ignore" I would just be sort of hiding her request so that I wouldn't accidentally add her to my friends by mistake (worried I would do this on my iphone, where I often hit the wrong button with my fat fingers).  But does this mean that she receives a rejection email from Facebook?  What does the email say?  I figured that "ignore" would equal limbo but I have a sinking feeling that it really means "reject" and I certainly didn't want to hurt her feelings!  This is a girl who was suicidal in high school.  Have I totally screwed up?!!

Don't worry!  They don't get notified that you've clicked "ignore".  It's just a limbo thing.  For all they know you've never received or seen the friend request from them.

I had a high school aquintance that was continuously talking bad about Obama, Healthcare Reform laws and the NHS.  I would always correct her when she posted incorrect information about the NHS (which was pretty much every post)...she's the one who swore that can't by pain relievers (i.e. paracetamol) over-the-counter and also insisted that prescriptions were free for everyone under the NHS.  I blocked her status updates awhile back because I just got tired of her ridiculous political babbling updates every 5 minutes, but I didn't delete her as a friend.  Anyway, she had been helpful in the past when I had questions about natural birth, breastfeeding, cloth diapering, whole foods, non-chemical detergents, etc. so yesterday I was going to send her a message asking her a few questions about some of those type of things we had talked about in the past...and discovered that she had deleted me as a friend!  I guess she got tired of being proven wrong on her political rants.  Oh well...