The anti-socalite's guide to Facebook Friends

I have many problems with Facebook. Too many, in fact, to be enumerated in such a short space. (Considering the space I have to write is infinite, I believe that says quite a bit about my feelings for the site).

But Facebook presents a special issue for the more anti-social of its users. That is, of course, the "friend" tool. If you're like me, you don't like people. When strangers strike up a conversation, your first reaction is the famed "deer in headlights" look followed by a mumbled response and a frantic glance for the exits. This makes riding in elevators quite difficult.

So, as you can imagine, becoming someone's "friend" is more than just clicking an accept button. It's as if I'm letting you into all aspects of my life. My flair, artistic self-portraits, and statues quoting obscure song lyrics are important to me - I can't just let anyone see them!

But denying friend requests is just as tricky as accepting them. There seems to be a number of people who you are pressured to accept despite actually not liking them at all. I'm thinking of people who you see regularly, such as classmates or colleagues, or people who will bug you if you're not their friend, such as family members or those people who hang out with mutual friends and you try to like them so as to not ruin the group dynamic but you actually hate their guts.

It's when people like these friend request me that I'm sent into a slight panic attack. How do I not offend them but still manage to reject their friendship? Luckily, I've developed some techniques for this tough situation.

1) Don't respond for as long as possible. Perhaps they'll forget that they friended you and you can delete their request without fear several weeks later. Also, it helps if you have several people kept waiting in this friend purgatory, because if asked why you didn't accept you can say that they "got lost in the queue".

2) Check their friends list. If the number exceeds 1,000, just ignore them. They won't miss your presence. For those that exceed 500 another trick is to friend them for a week then remove them. The likelihood that they'll see you're missing is slim.

3) Friend them. Then hide them from your news feed. This works for people who are obnoxious to friend because they post updates about their bowel movements every hour or spend their waking hours on Farmville. Not an option if you're paranoid about this person stalking you.

4) Evaluate their stalkability. If they're interesting and you like to snicker at their stupid party pictures, friend them. Or if you think they're a poison to your group of friends and you want to know their sinister plans, friend them. As I always say, Facebook is for me to stalk you, not for you to stalk me. And how will you know what they're up to if you're not Facebook friends with them?

If all of these techniques fail, you still have two options open to you. Suck it up, look them in the (figurative) eye and ignore them, or determine that you really don't have anything useful on Facebook anyway and friend them.

(For the record, at the time of posting I have 67 friends on Facebook. I told you, I don't like people).