Putting the "Friend" Back in "Neofriend" by hippiesoul |  |
NEOPIA CENTRAL - Neomail and Neofriends - a very old and very cool feature
of Neopets. Everyone sends lots of Neomails a day, everyone makes lots of Neofriend
requests a day, and everyone has an endless list of Neofriends, right? Well,
unfortunately, it is... and that's exactly what's wrong with this feature. Well,
not the feature itself but the way people use it.
I don't know how many of you noticed that Neofriend is spelled 'neo-f-r-i-e-n-d',
but I know most Neopians haven't... people these days request to be Neofriends
with someone because they have a cool user lookup, because they were published
in the Times, because they posted something on the boards. This is not the way
to request friendships, but clicking 'accept' right away isn't the way to deal
with them either.
Who do you consider your 'friend' in real life? Is it someone you trust, care
for and appreciate? Or is it someone you saw doing something, or consider popular,
but probably never talked to? I'd say the first one. But whom would you consider
your Neofriend? The second one? When you get right down to it, a friend is a
friend, so why should a Neofriend be any different than a normal friend to you?
Do you honestly think it makes any sense to be friends with someone you never
talked to, or barely know?
I remember when my first article was published in The Neopian Times. I got
lots of Neomails, some were compliments, others were from people wanting to
say 'hi' and have a chat, and, of course, I also got Neofriend requests. At
the time, I know I accepted them all, but never Neomailed the person to say
'hi' or anything, and they never bothered to Neomail me, either. I became friends
with some of the persons that Neomailed me compliments and then had a conversation
with me, and we maintained contact for weeks. A couple of days, after my article
was out, my Neofriend list was already huge. Of course, 2/3 of it was usernames
I didn't even recognise, but I just left them alone.
But later on, it started to bug me. Whenever I wanted to send an item to someone,
I always had to scroll lots, and it was a real pain to find the username I wanted
in the list when I was Neomailing. I tried Neomailing some of the users in the
list, and I didn't even get a reply for most of them. So I deleted them all
and my list was reduced to just several names.
A couple of weeks ago, in my guild (The Neopian Times Appreciation Guild -
NTAG)'s message board, we were discussing this, and many members mentioned how,
if they had something in, they would always receive lots of Neofriend requests.
After accepting them all, they could end up with a ridiculously long Neofriend
list, sometimes even pages long, of which they would ultimately only recognise
a few names! That's just something to think about: how can you truly be 'friends'
with someone you don't even know? Of course after the discussion we had on the
board, they went to clear their list, and felt happy about it in the end. I
went to look at my list and it was with joy I noticed I recognised all the names.
The question is: why do people make Neofriend requests before actually talking
to the person? Maybe they feel important if they're friends with someone 'popular',
like the writers and artists for the Times, or maybe they just want to take
up space in the Neopets servers. If it was one of these reasons, it was a bad
reason. The only acceptable reason for the requests is when you noticed the
person, had one or two interesting conversations and actually care about the
person and know something about them. If that's the case, then becoming Neofriends
would be a good way to show that.
Imagine this common situation in Neopets: Someone saw an interesting post on
the boards and did a lookup on the person, noticing how beautiful their lookup
is. Immediately, he does a Neofriend request. If I try 'translate' this situation
to real life it would be something like this: A guy was walking down the street
and heard someone make a rather intelligent comment. He looks to the girl and
notices her pretty outfit. Immediately, he walks to her and asks, without even
saying 'hi', "Can we be friends?". Does this sound awkward to you? It does to
me.
But what to do if you received a request and you don't recognise the username?
I think the best bet would be to Neomail the person and make the first move
to get to know the person. Once you feel you know something about that person,
then decide whether you want to accept the request or refuse it. Or you can
just refuse them all and block Neofriend requests, but you don't want to be
that extreme, do you? Actually, Neofriend requests blocking is a good feature,
but can be very annoying when you want to talk to someone and they blocked all
messages from people that aren't their Neofriend and blocked all Neofriends
requests too! Blocking all Neofriends requests is something that you could do
if you really don't want to handle them anymore, but give it some thinking before
you actually do it.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is "Please, get to know the person before
requesting to be friends!". I'm sure you talked to your real life friends a
couple of times before you considered them your friends! Besides being a bit
annoying, those requests do nothing but take up space and confuse people when
they want to send an item or Neomail.
Now that you read this article, you may want to go look at your Neofriends
list and rethink it... Any comments are welcomed, but PLEASE, no Neofriend requests
if you have never talked to me! =P
Note: This article was suggested by tdyans during the Neofriends
discussion at NTAG's board, and was edited by some of the nice guild members.
Thank you all! |
