<p>Helenback: Go into your settings and privacy settings, and there is a function where you can “block” someone from ever seeing you on Facebook. Your name won’t even appear on “friends of friends” to this person. You can also make sure that your Facebook profile is not searchable on Google, which I highly recommend.</p>
<p>I haven’t been harassed by anyone on FB yet, but my husband has. He defriended someone who had obnoxious status updates. This person kept trying to refriend him. Then he had the nerve to actually call my husband and ask why he was not friending him! (I should probably tell my husband about the block function!)</p>
<p>We have about 44 members in the group and our discussion board is pretty quiet. Recently we discussed some travels and also the network problems we were having with CC. We mainly have enjoyed getting to know each other as “friends” and share our lives more than we do on CC. I understand it isn’t for everyone, but many of us have expanded our connections to each other.</p>
<p>Oops…sorry that’s an excellent resource, post "36 - saved it in favorites - especially like being able to “group” for family, friends, professional!</p>
<p>Yesterday a friend at work and I happened to mention a former employee (gone for over 10 years) that neither of us liked. Low and behold, I had a Friends request this morning from that very same disliked former employee! If my friend was on Facebook I would swear she had put her up to it!</p>
<p>As adults can’t we just include everyone? Especially those we are related to? This Facebook thing seems like high school drama.</p>
<p>Instead of figuring out how to avoid certain people, a Facebook page could be used to bless people with inclusion, compassion, and a little communication (communication, that really costs nothing to give).</p>
<p>Why not use Facebook to try and make the world a better place (starting with one’s own sphere of influence)?</p>
<p>My SIL and her evil husband have been the cause of great discord in my marriage. I don’t want to include them in any part of my life that I don’t have to. Okay?</p>
<p>“Inclusion” sounds nice and a laudable goal, but in lots of instances it’s just not in keeping with what happens in real life. Those same folks that you think should be included are often real buttheads and are “poison”. Like some we encounter every day as we go about life. No one requires you to befriend them. Why would it be different for Facebook?</p>
<p>In missypie’s situation, the phrase, “You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your relatives” comes to mind. Just because you’re related to someone by blood or by marriage doesn’t mean they have to be privy to all parts of your life, including Facebook. Hang in there OP, and continue to ignore the request (but then again, I’m a pretty private person who hasn’t yet mustered up enough courage to even CREATE a Facebook page, so maybe I’m not the right person to comment!)</p>
<p>I happen to think it’s healthy to recognize when people are truly toxic, despite every effort you’ve made to give them kindness, compassion, and the benefit of the doubt. </p>
<p>I feel I have to be civil to those people in real life, whether they’re related to me or not, and I am. </p>
<p>I completely agree with missypie - I don’t want to include those people in any part of my life that I don’t have to.</p>
<p>This isn’t the sort of exclusion that makes the high school social life so often cruel. That sort of exclusion is meant to be public, and to send messages about the status of the excluder. This is about keeping some oases in one’s life.</p>
<p>I think you all have very valid points, but when we sit in our places of worship and are taught about forgiveness, I am sure that the message is especially focused on those who are the most difficult to forgive. Best not to drop all that good advice come Monday morning.</p>
<p>There is a consequence to another person - particularly a relative - if we choose not to befriend them online (which is such a minor gesture of kindness, really). If someone tries to be your friend on Facebook, and you decline, you have sent them a rejection. It is your choice about what you do - your business. However, if you post the issue on a public forum, you are inviting commentary. This is just my two cents.</p>
<p>HarrietMWelsch
Not all of what can make high school socially painful involves exclusion that is meant to be public (or is even intentional). Teenagers are not always mature enough to put themselves in another person’s shoes and realize when their innocent behavior can be hurtful. Fully formed adult women are recognized by their willingness to go out of their way to include a newcomer, to open up a conversational circle, or to notice the person standing off alone. As the hearts of our families and communities, we bring people together, demonstrate forgiveness, reach out to the weak or odd, and turn the other cheek again and again.</p>
<p>As for toxicity, “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent” (Eleanor Roosevelt). Extend that to mean that in general, we are perfectly capable of being psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually strong enough to be immune to the toxicity in other people. That is an authentic and foolproof “oasis”. We can choose to evolve enough so that we are the leaders and the peacemakers. We can be the change we want to see in the world.</p>
<p>Not really…I like the “I just don’t go onto that new fangled Facebook thing very often”/ignore ideas. (It’s actually true. I’m much too private to post my every move on facebook. And I really don’t care about the every move of anyone other than my own children.)</p>
<p>I don’t think many people are so pathetic that they click the “friends” button and feel rejected every day that it’s not accepted. Most of us go through lists looking for people we know, click the “friends” key and don’t give it much thought thereafter.</p>
<p>God may call me to account for my feelings about the evil twin and his wife some day…or not…there are loads of “Please bring your wrath upon my enemies” lines in the Psalms.</p>
I’m sure that is true, but it really is taking it to the extreme and losing the point in the process. I don’t have a facebook or a myspace (or a twitter or a whatever else is out there), but from what I have read and heard adults do not send out a lot of friend requests. A family member will certainly be aware when a request is declined. Perhaps if that person is in fact “pathetic”, it would be especially kind to throw them a bone.</p>
<p>It is best to tread in the most careful manner possible, worrying not about who is pathetic and who isn’t, but instead governing our own behavior so that we do no harm.</p>
<p>As for “Please bring your wrath upon my enemies” lines in the Psalms, I would instead be looking for validation that we are encouraged to bring our own wrath upon our enemies (because I have never seen it). I am pretty confident that we are supposed to let God take care of the judgement and punishment part.</p>
<p>
Perhaps then the cost of befriending this relative would be very low? She would learn almost nothing about you, right? Also, you can control who sees what in the privacy settings (my youngest just set up a page this week and I supervised it).</p>
[quote]
A family member will certainly be aware when a request is declined. [/quote}</p>
<p>You don’t decline anyone. You just never get around to dealing with the email that asks you to click a link to accept. It’s like not getting a Christmas card from someone you used to get a card from. You may not even notice. Or they may have just not sent cards that year. Or they may have affirmatively stricken you from their list. How many of us spend time pondering it?</p>
<p>We are talking about your sister-in-law, right? Relationships have been historically strained, and she sent you a friend request. You don’t think she will notice if you fail to respond? C’mon!</p>
<p>Most likely, she will carefully add it to her pile of resentments.</p>
<p>spideygirl, here’s the thing in my case. I can (and do) forgive, ninety-times-nine or to whatever extent is necessary. (Ad infinitum, probably, in this case.)</p>
<p>What I will not do is friend a person who is going to post ugly, racist comments on my wall - as she has done on others’ - or muse about how “those homos should all be dead already” - as she has done on others’. That’s two specific examples of what I meant when I said toxic. </p>
<p>Just because I can consider the source, forgive her, and so on, doesn’t mean that I’m doing the world any good by giving her another place to spread her poison. </p>
<p>I choose NOT to have my other friends exposed to gratuitous ugliness, or to see it myself when I don’t have to. I’m very comfortable with that choice, spiritually and in every other way.</p>
<p>My parents have friends (from their former church!) who were forwarding racist and anti-gay “jokes” and other hatefilled emails to them. My parents asked them to please stop and the “friends” got mad and said they were very offended!</p>
<p>Amazing, isn’t it, missypie? H and I have been told, in a roundabout way, that we may not be invited to an upcoming family wedding because our spiritual life does not pass muster with the couple - who are among those who forward that kind of email (probably the same ones) to us. We have asked them to stop more than once, and got similarly offended responses, including the strong suggestion that not appreciating these emails means we’re anti-American and do not love God, our troops, etc.</p>