Last week I was following a video course and testing out some of what the narrator was describing using my G+ account which resulted in my snagging some new people into my Acquaintance circle. Again, just testing something out and the person who’s circle I used is someone I know pretty darn well so I knew that our interests would be largely quite common. Part of the test was to see how many people added me back and how quickly that happened. I figured that eventually I would clear that circle out after awhile. So, I pretty much forgot about it.
But then, someone who added me during that time frame started trying to initiate a chat. The first time I was deep into something at work and just ignored him. The second time I told him I was at work and couldn’t chat. The third time was this weekend and after exchanging hellos his next message was “age”. After an eyeroll and a quick look into his profile to determine this was a very young guy from somewhere overseas who seemed to like posting photos of himself but not much else (clothed thank goodness!) I closed the chat and intended to remove him from my circles, but got distracted.
First this this morning it started again. I had *just* gotten into to work and was mildly amused at his persistence so I gave it another shot. Here’s the chat transcript for your amusement:
R – Hello!
Me – Hi!
R – age
Me – Old enough to be able to advise you that it is not wise to ask that of someone you don’t know the first time you chat 🙂
R – Do you want a relationship?
Me – Um – no – look at my profile – I already am in one for over 10 years now – if that is all you are looking for, then move on somewhere else please and stop trying to chat with me.
R – But I love you and want to marry you!
Me – <closes chat and removes R from circles>
So that was my Monday morning – how was yours?!
Trees & Flowers & Birds! 
I *DO NOT* for the life of me understand a) how G+ works, and b) why I get random circle requests from complete strangers from the other side of the world. A couple weeks ago I got one from a grocery store manager from Singapore. How did you find me, what do you want from me, what compelled you to add some complete stranger from the US into your G+?
I also don’t understand how to either a) say no to someone or b) remove them from circles. I’ve got this separate circle reserved for “spammers” and it’s a motley collection of foreigners, “social media experts”, and other random people who somehow felt compelled to click on my name. That, more than anything, is why I unpinned G+ as an app tab in my Firefox and only sign into it once a week or so.
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Heh – I am learning all too well what you can do with Google circles AS a social media novice who will need to promote her website & ebook she is selling very soon – though I will be mostly doing it from a different account so as not to spam my friends. I just didn’t get a chance to set that up before I took this course.
I don’t care who ads me – that’s THEIR stream they want to pollute with my crap – I don’t add them back unless I know them – at least, I didn’t until I started playing with G+ for something different. I get those random people too and it cracks me up. Now I wonder if they were ‘scraping’ someone else’s circles like I was doing that day!
Taking people out of circles is easy – just uncheck the circle you put them in and they are gone.
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