I’ve realized that I often post things to my Facebook wall that I don’t mention on my blog. And then I realized some readers of my blog might want to also read those things (always brief comments or announcements of places I’m hanging out—where you might even be able to join me—and things like that). If you are one of those people, you might want to follow me on Facebook. In fact my Facebook wall is basically my twitter feed (I use Twitter only for appearance and publication announcements).

But again that’s follow, not friend.

Unless you have an exceptional reason to friend me. Because I am nearly out of slots for Facebook friends. They allow you only 5000, and I’m over 4000. And I receive several hundred requests a month. So, simple math entails I must decline nearly all. I restrict commenting on my Facebook posts to Friends, so I understand the interest, but I have to limit that.

So don’t friend me, unless (a) we actually are friends or colleagues, or (b) we’ve hung out before in substantial fashion, or (c) you are Patreon or PayPal patron (as then this is a perk: they get to comment on my Facebook posts as well as publish instant comments on my blog), or (d) you have a professional reason (like if you are a board member or officer of an organization, even a small one, e.g. a campus group or community group; or you are a producer of media content, like podcasts or secular swag or blogs or books or movies or what have you; or you are a professor or professional thinktanker interested in my work; things like that), or (e) you are considering dating me. Or any combination of the above. I will accept requests for a variety of other reasons that I can’t put into words, usually something I love about a person’s profile or their aesthetic or their art. But there’s no easy way for you to know that in advance.

If you do want to friend me specifically, and not just follow me, and you meet one or more of the above criteria, also message me to tell me that. I might not be able to tell from your profile who you are or if we’ve met or anything. Most people don’t have their settings set to public enough for me to even vet their profile, or don’t put that information on it, and profile pics are often inadequate for me to recognize faces, and so on. So just tell me, then I’ll know. All my Facebook settings are set to public, so anyone can message me.

That saves me a lot of time. Because, yes, I actually respond individually, and manually, to every Facebook friend request I get, explaining all this. That’s generally over a hundred a week. And I do try to figure out if each requester meets any of the criteria beforehand. So, that’s time. Indeed, not only is there is no automated capability on Facebook, in fact they stymie it by forcing you to pass a Find Waldo test for every message you send, when you message to non-friends as often as I have to do for this purpose. So, hundreds and hundreds of Find Waldo tests every month, just to send my own quasi-automated message.

Either way, if it sounds like something you are interested in, follow me. You can also manage your follows to make sure Facebook actually shows you everything I post (just follow their instructions).