Odd Facebook thing?

[bibbitybobbityyhat]

I'm not a prolific user of FB and have a short friends list.

I posted something on my newsfeed tonight for the first time in a few weeks. I dip in and out. I use it mainly to keep up with my many siblings and cousins and friends who live in other countries. I usually read other people's posts and like them, I don't do much myself.

Today I got a message in the private messagey bit. It said "Say hi to your new Facebook friend Mary" (not her real name)

Mary is a fof who friend requested me about 3 years ago and I ignored it because I assumed she accidentally requested me as I don't know her other than the very tenuous fof connection. So she has been in my friend requests list for 3 years but I haven't done anything with it.

So what is this new private message tonight? Who has it come from?If it's not Mary messaging me (and why would she, I truly doubt it's her) then its FB messaging me about unanswered friend requests and I find that frankly ODD. I've got lots of unanswered friend requests (well about 10), why has this one come up tonight?

It's like FB are using the messinging service to prompt me to reply to friend requests. I'm slightly freaked.

You usually only get that message when you become Facebook friends with someone. Could you have accidentally accepted her friend request or sent her one by accident?

It's FB trying to get you engaged with FB. It recognises you have little interaction so when you do log in it alerts you to notifications, unanswered messages or Freind requests etc. It won't be your distant fof trying to contact you. It's just a FB algorithm.

As a pp said, you only get that message when you've accepted the friend request.

Check you've not clicked accept by mistake. I've noticed there are often little boxes that crop up on the timeline about friend requests as I've got one that I havent decided on yet. It's very easy to click accept without realising.

This happened to me - and is one of the reasons I left FB! I left someone in my requests as I didn't know them, it was done random who added me but then weeks/months later when I forgot about it, I had a message saying we were friends. I never accepted this person, freaked me right out.

How could I have accidentally accepted her friend request?

This is pissing me off.

This is an automatic message Facebook now sends when you've connected with someone.

Somehow you have accepted her friend request - check your friends list and see if she's there.

Is she actually on your friend list?

I've certainly sent out requests by accident when nosing at people's profiles! So I assume you can accept them by accident too. Easy done, especially on a phone.