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The fact is, by and large, guys are creepy. Attractive females are bombarded with guys approaching them in all sorts of ways, constantly. I'm sure you've heard of the kind of garbage that fills OkCupid inboxes. The internet is terrible in that regard because it is so much more accessible (i.e. you don't have to approach them face to face). I completely understand why they default to putting the guardrails up. Yeah it makes things that much more difficult for The Good Guys, but how are they supposed to know from a Facebook friend request?

I guess I should've prefaced my anecdote: I wasn't interested in the girl in any romantic way. We're close friends now and I'm still not interested in her romantically. It was just a random example (I have some guy examples too). I just mentioned that I'm a pretty good looking guy in the sense that I don't have an unkempt look (i.e. unshaved, unwashed, etc.) that would evoke creepiness.

I don't think this is a battle of the sexes kind of deal even though you're completely correct and I don't deny anything you said.

No idea why you're being downvoted--though I would like to amend your statement from "guys are creepy" to "guys are easily perceived as creepy".

I cannot help but notice that it seems like there may be a trend in faster binning of folks into creepy/not creepy among my generation; I believe this also may be because social skills are not that great in this magical interconnected age. People are so used to being able to pull up relevant data about others, I theorize, that being faced with a new person without that data or connection makes the newcomer more alien.

You're right, I do tend to be a bit harsh in that regard (maybe that's why I was downvoted), but I'm also trying to cover all of the general public, not just the considerate HN reader.

And creepy is a strong word. It's just that it's tiring, having to fend off guys that may not be creepy but they're just not interested in. We really don't have any reference for what that's like (unless you're a celebrity, I suppose). But I've heard enough about it to have developed a strong bias against unsolicited/unwanted behavior.

It's also really interesting, right?

Consider that, once upon a time, to successfully creep on somebody you actually had to show up in person, or send mail, or something like this. That took time, and resources.

Now, I have to spend ~30 seconds slinging out a fast message to attempt and reconnect, and if I hear no response, I may do the same thing in a few hours--note that my time spent is less than two minutes/day, which subjectively seems perfectly reasonable. To the receiving party, if communication isn't desired, this seems like a huge deal.

Moreover, limiting only to a certain class of stereotypical male (the hacker), it's very easy to get in a situation where you mistake lack of communication for a channel problem instead of an interested problem, and so you resend over and over--especially if you think that hey, maybe the message got lost or something.

Compound this now with the way people leak information online all the time, and the way that these companies (in order to foster connectedness/advertising) practically rub information and personal data in our faces. A message out of the blue (because it's so easy to send) about a person's shared interest in a common album (because my social network provider told me about it) is immediately tagged as creepy, even though the data and message were trivially put into motion.

(I say this having made and sometimes still making these mistakes.)

I think that a new sort of manners need to evolve that actually recognize just how easy it is to communicate nowadays. People need thicker skin, and they probably need much more explicit flow control ("Not interested, fuck off." instead of silence). On the other side, people need to appreciate when they might be making others uncomfortable by spamming too much or doing too much cyber-sleuthing (which is, again, something that once took real dedication; "I remember when being a stalker used to mean something" lol).

> I would like to amend your statement from "guys are creepy" to "guys are easily perceived as creepy".

Well, both are true of course -- there are actually large numbers of guys whom I think it's fair to term "creepy," and there are many guys who are not really creepy, but because of the former group, they don't get the benefit of the doubt.

I try not to be creepy, but inevitability there are circumstance where something I do, even if well-meant, ends up looking kinda creepy, and I'm only too aware of it. Oh well, at least I try... TT

See, the key is mediation. You meet people in a Counter-Strike match, you know what the parameters are. Either they are in your team, or they are trying to shoot your avatar. If someone from your job adds you in Linkedin, it isn't creepy; they are just trying to get some recommendations and move on to another job. :)

Facebook has zero context. Why is that guy trying to be my friend? I don't know. How do I approach him? What are we supposed to talk about? It's all incredibly awkward. If Facebook did the equivalent of putting a chessboard between us, everything would flow much easier.

> If Facebook did the equivalent of putting a chessboard between us

Spot on!

Facebook's addition of games to the platform was obviously a way to address this issue, but a failed one, because the 3rd parties have to earn money themselves, and can't just benefit from the additional data that users may generate/reaveal when playing, that can be used for improving the advertisement platform.

I.e. if Facebook as you said, made a chess game or perhaps a social game, then it could involve friends of friends, and thus make a user expand his or hers friendship circle. Meanwhile, this new data about what connected them, etc, etc, could be very valueable to the ad platform because it would show what made the user give in to the uknown. My 0.2 $ (1.16 kr. DKK)

Just slapping a web interface over IRC channels would be 80% there. "Oh, I'm here to talk about hockey while I watch the Flyers game."

But Facebook might be hurting themselves in this regard by forcing real names, one account, etc. And the expectation that anything you do will spam all your friends newsfeeds. I mean, if my friends, coworkers and family all wanted to talk about hockey I wouldn't need to chat with strangers.

I love this post, +100 if I could. Incredibly perceptive and well thought out.

I think I'll try to jump into the question of why adding someone you've never spoken to, though see regularly, is creepy. The fact that you were classmates makes it less so, but imagine if you were a regular customer at a coffeeshop and got a facebook friend request from the barista. Would you be a little weirded out?

People post personal info (pictures, status updates, etc.) on Facebook, and I think the expectation when you accept a friend request is that the requester will at least make a cursory glance through your profile. If you, out of the blue, request someone you've never spoken too, I'd say a reduction in the creepiness factor could be sending along a message with the request saying "Hey, I've seen you around in class, I'm dvt".

If there doesn't seem to a be any rhyme or reason to the out of the blue friend request, someone could just make the assumption you just want to look through their profile at their pictures and stuff.

Actually I would be weirded out, you're 100% correct. But that's exactly my point. I think that whomever solves this problem will bring out the next big thing. There's nothing inherently weird about approaching and/or talking to someone. Maybe because FB has so much personal information, it just becomes awkward.

So here is where FB's Achilles Heel may lie. On one hand, it's great that it stores pictures and stuff. But on the other .. do you really want your pictures and personal information out there? (Besides, even if your profile is private, pictures can still be linked/shared, if you get the raw .jpg url.) Maybe we (as tech nerds) are just more aware of these caveats whereas most people trust FB like they would trust a family photo album under the couch.

It seemed Google Circles could be an improvement on this, and the original paper discussing it suggested as much, but the implementation leaves much to be desired. Shouldn't the Friends circle have more information shared than the Acquaintances circle? Close Friends might even require double mutual confirmation.

(Missed schmozz's comment below, I link we are trying to say somethig similar. Google Plus's major failing is discoverability.)

I think that is quite a large part of it. From what I have seen many people don't really filter their privacy settings on Facebook. Most relationships develop around a shared interest or activity and each develops at its own pace dependant on many different factors. Accepting a friend request for a lot of people would be like you going up to them in class and saying 'Hey, I've seen you around. I'm dvt.' and the person responding by pulling out their phone and handing it to you to leaf through their photos, check their calendar and see who;s numbers they have.

Google tried to address this with circles, which Facebook responded to and implemented a similar solution, but I think most people just don't like to classify their 'Friends' when first accepting a connection and are very unlikely to reclassify them later.

There is something, however, that keeps us from engaging online in non-anonymous contexts due to this perceived (and I would argue Western/American) creepyness factor.

It may have something to do with the fact that most personal violations (criminal or not) are by people known to the victim. The media likes to play up stranger-danger, but I think people realize that's pretty much BS and know where the real danger lies. Couple this with the predilection of many on social networks to amass friendlists and make connections with anybody even remotely familiar or proximal (classmates, sports club, etc.), it's explainable as simple self-preservation.

I think this is a very fair argument.

Although it seems a bit paranoid to think that whenever someone talks to you in real life (or adds you FB for that matter), your thoughts instantly go to "will this person try to stalk/murder me?" But maybe it's not a bad thing to be vigilant.

Their thoughts don't instantly go to that, which is why there are so many weak friend connections on FB, but from time to time the realization may set in. In other words, being familiar to someone is not a guarantee against being seen as creepy.

Just talking about this with an office colleague.

An interest forum (sports site, gaming network, subreddit, etc) is not unlike a party in some ways in that it is not unreasonable for someone to overhear a topic being discussed and pick the right time to say "You guys talking about [x]? What did you think about [aspect of x]?"

Is Facebook a little more like separate dining tables at a restaurant? If you overheard a neighbouring table discussing a topic of interest, only in very particular circumstances would you jump in and participate.

I think it's all to do with perceived norms. Facebook isn't really designed to be a place for meeting people you don't fully trust - there's too much risk as you're giving them all the information you've ever shared (on facebook) ever and permitting them to clog up your newsfeed - and so anyone that breaks these norms is either a creep or a spammer.

Twitter's a bit better. I've seen that you can slowly form connections there, but only through the internet-equivalent of small talk in the magazine aisle of a supermarket you both shop at.

Back in the days of MySpace it certainly didn't seem quite as closed off - friend requests and messages from strangers because they were cute weren't always creepy (nb. may be a more a symptom of being 14 rather than an intrinsic property of the interaction...). Also, sites like Grindr seemed to have solved one aspect of the meeting strangers problem - albeit only in the gay sex niche.

I opened a company two years ago devoted to solving this problem in particular. But more generally, we aim to disrupt social networks and dating sites, and group deals, by making something that is USEFUL to people's social lives.

this is awesome!

> I'm a pretty good looking guy with a good job that goes to a great school. So why the fuck is adding someone on FB

Not that I think that your friend request was creepy, but why would a judgment as to the creepiness of your actions depend on any of these things?

Or are you just accepting the reality that people are labeled 'creepy' based on their desirability and not the inherent creepiness of their actions.

I already addressed this in another post. My point wasn't about desirability, but merely about the fact that I don't have an unkempt look that would evoke creepiness.

(So, basically, my profile pic isn't this: http://www.kindofcreepy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/creep...)

> The solution will probably entail geolocation, semi-anonymity, and perhaps ephemeral (that is, non-persistent) IRC-like chatrooms.

Checkout chatimity.com (my startup). This part of your comment is spot on for us :) It is a geolocation based, pseudonymous IRC-style place with some behavioral tracking and modulation to keep the place clean and civilized.

Not trying to mess with you nor troll you but I got a bad vibe about you just from reading your comment. I wonder if the girl got a similar vibe.

One more thing, beauty is on the eye of the beholder and true beauty is within. It sounds cliche but as I've gotten older I've continued to be surprised that this is true. In reality is a combination of both that adds up to make a person truly beautiful.