Dance like no one's watching

I know this might sound weird given that I have a blog and the things I blog about are obviously open for public scrutiny, but I absolutely detest it when people who know who I am, but yet do not know me personally, start “keeping track” on what’s going on in my life.  A good example would be two of Iceman’s cousins based in Australia.  They minute they saw on Facebook that Iceman and I were together, they dropped me notes and wanted to add me as their friend.  One of them even said something like "If Iceman loves you, we love you too".  Ok, I know they were just joking and being friendly but that still freaked me out. 

Initially, I added them as friends on Facebook because I didn’t want to be rude.  But I know they check out my page every now and then ‘cos they leave comments and so on and it really irks me!  The things I post on Facebook are for friends to see.  Not for people who think they know me when they don’t.  I concede that some may consider my behaviour anti-social… but the straw that broke the camel’s back was when one of them did a "How Well Do You Know Serene" quiz that I set up for my friends.  In the end, I deleted both of them from my list of friends.

I think I have a pretty broad criteria for adding people as friends on Facebook; the minimum being that I have at least "spoken" to you online, be it via MSN or ICQ or MRIC or even e-mail.  In addition, these "online friends" were formed for a reason – common areas of interest, being on the same team in some online game, etc.  Thus, being purely a friend of my friend, doesn’t count. 

So, I’m anti-social that way.  Sometimes I wonder if it’s ‘cos I’m an only child and so I do not mix well with strangers.  (I always give strangers a very cold shoulder when they talk to my in public).  I think the crux of the issue is that I need to retain some control over what people see of me because this will affect their impression of me.  If people meet the real me and hated me, that’s fine.  I won’t change who I am.  But to "know" me through Facebook alone?  That’s too one-dimensional and I don’t like it.