Befriending Dilemma

Description
This pattern occurs when a user chose not to send a friend request to someone. This could be because he or she does not want to take initiatives, and feels the other user should send a request instead.

Examples
The pattern could occur for different reasons, which will be shown in the following examples.

Alice is new in the class that Bob has been in for a while. Bob, also being older, wants to be friends with Alice, but feels that he should not have to actively seek out new people and believes that Alice should initiate the friend request.

Alice on the other hand thinks that "why would Bob care about me?" and hesitates because of that.

Another example could be that the user doesn't want to cause the Re-Following pattern upon the other user.

To reduce Spam, most social medias does not let the user send friend-requests to other users, if the user has misused the friend-request mechanic. This can cause yet another befriending dilemma, as the user may be afraid to send friend requests to users whom she is not sure will accept the request.

Pros & Cons
This is an unwanted pattern for social media which want its users to create networks of people. One way to avoid could be to make befriending someone as not a big deal, to make it easier to add people.

Relations
This pattern is related to Maintaining a Facade in that the user's status comes into effect. The pattern is also related to Fear of Failing in that some users avoid sending a request if they feel that they might get a no. It's also related to Re-Following in that a user don't want to cause that pattern upon the other user.

Friends Via Events is one pattern that starts this pattern.

Contributors
Created by Andreas Bjerkeholt. Discussed with Patric Westberg. Revised by Christian Broniewicz.