Why are people so cautious with friend requests?

[Spinozette]

I'm trying to expand my friends list and get new friends on here, so I've been going about profiles and looking for ones that catch my eye with their descriptions/profile pictures/references etc. and adding them, looking through friends of friends, etc.
My problem is, though, alot of these people deny my friend requests or ask why I add them. My profile is public, and my Steam level is decently high, so I don't think it's that they suspect me of being a bot or anything. If you're going to make your profile all flashy and interesting, then why be so cautious with friends? Is there some danger or something to adding friends I don't know about? On other sites I can usually add people with no problem, and I've made lots of friends on the internet that way, but here it seems almost impossible. Why?

[ARuarkGuy]

They don't know you and you don't know them. Why would they want to be friends with you if they don't know you? It makes no sense. Just saying.

[DirtyFishy]

Some people have specific rules with regards to adding people.
For example, I help out on the Steam forums every now and then and I request that people don't add me when I reply to their threads (they never read it though).

Some people only want close friends or people they know on their friends list.

[mas]

Ill help ya expand.
personaltiy: I want everything to be perfect. I check my profile alot every day, i also look through what people have doing.

[DirtyFishy]

Maybe you aren't looking in the right places.
There's a whole New to Steam section where people want friends. There are also many groups too.

[ARuarkGuy]

Originally posted by Hair Pie:

Originally posted by ARuarkGuy:

They don't know you and you don't know them. Why would they want to be friends with you if they don't know you? It makes no sense. Just saying.

How am I supposed to get to know them without adding them though? Or do you mean that an unspoken rule on here is that you can only add irl friends or something?

I mean get to know them a little or just that you know each other a little. I would also listen to DirtyFishy. He has some stuff that'll help.

[ArtSkunk]

just so you know, there are some real weird people on the internet, thus there is always a danger of adding people you dont know.

my first example is a guy and his troll buddies that followed me from another website, learned what my steam profile was from my bio on said website and attempted to nuke my personal groups and profile comments, phish me, hack me and blackmail me. guy's a total loon who thinks digimon are real life creatures that must be protected. *rolls eyes* 'his' groups planned and carried out hack attacks, assaults on other users, ect.

My second example, is more... dangerous.
about half a year ago i got some random friend invites due to having had my Display name at the time as "Honey Tabby Slime" or something like that (its a creature from slime rancher).
So i accepted, i pretty much dont accept the invites unless ive talked with them somewhere else, even if its just a game or something. little did i know the guy i friended was 12. he asked how old i was, told him 27, he said "really?" and then something along the lines of "i'm 12!". needless to say, i let him stick around for about a week and then removed him.
you never really know who the person friending you is, what they might want, or if they will spell doom for you if you do the wrong thing.

i know a lot of people are all like "aw, whats the worse that can happen if i friend these people?" answer is, quite a lot...if your unlucky.

[pike]

so your farming friends for future scams ,

[Narcoleptic Marshmallow]

Not everyone is a friend collector and not everyone uses Steam as a second Facebook.

[Staryn]

Over the years I've gotten a lot of spam and scam requests. So I screen everyone who adds me. With how Steam is, everyone ought to do that.

And some people just don't want Steam friends, or only want a couple of people.

[Drab]

I automatically reject anyone whose user name sounds like a 12-year-old made it up.


Like the OP.

[Astraea Kisaragi]

As told above, we are here to play and not collect "friends". And as even more above I also had my fair share of annyoing idiots and stalkers, some of them followed me trough 3 web communities here.

Short story: I was member of a pretty high class art community. As time flied, relations started become sour, senior members started the leave, the trashy members who before lived under the stones somewhere - started to surface (and even take mod positions), artwork quality dropped to bottom, site owner constantly "updated" the site in a way that nothing ever changed.
I kinda protested in my own direct way and eventually made half of the site enemy and got myself suspended by those "new classy" mods. So as my last sentence I told them that the site will not hold out another year.
My prediction became true after 10 months, at once they didnt had site to go in and some of them started to hunt me despite that I wasnt online for 10 months due the suspension, neither even could have been in anything involved (simply the site owner used the site as testing grounds and made a new paying site using a similar design, ditching everybody)
Yet some of them blamed me in the extent that they literally started to stalk me. In games like Wow or LoL which I never cared about somebody, made characters with my username and trashtalked everybody. When I changed my name to Astraea Kisaragi, again magically new characters with this name appeared in those games. Talk about craziness, huh?

Anyways, I don't want to make pity anybody me, just showing why somebody cannot be enough careful. Now I have very few Steam friends, but all of them are battle proven veterans with adult ammount of common sense.

[76561198134875094]

ya

[brunão]

CUZIN LERGAÇL

[dirrtymartini]

Originally posted by Drab:

I automatically reject anyone whose user name sounds like a 12-year-old made it up.


Like the OP.

Lvl 0's get an automatic block from me. Anybody under 5yrs on Steam? Blocked. Go hump someone else's leg for CS:GO trades or wtf you wanna do. Don't waste my time.

[SniperWolfMGS]

Originally posted by Hair Pie:

Originally posted by Drab:

I automatically reject anyone whose user name sounds like a 12-year-old made it up.


Like the OP.

It's a reference to a song...

Reguardless, people have different tastes and expectations of who they will accept as friends. Me personally, would never want to be seen with a friend named Hair Pie. It would show up on my friends on my profile. It may be a song reference but long before that it was a reference to something else.

Alot of steam users, myself included, have a strict "no random friend request" policy. I mean you dont just walk up to people and say "your my friend now" and start following them around right? Same principle aplies.