I have a lot of friends on Facebook, and virtually all of them are people I personally know or people I’ve gotten to know virtually through other sites such as Livejournal.

(Yes, Livejournal, where I started my online presence! Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m old.)

Occasionally I’ll peruse the “People you May Know” section of Facebook which pops up in my feed once in awhile. I can honestly say I’m a man of the world in that I am a member of many different tribes. My life has gone off in so many different directions that I have my feet in so many social and cultural pools.

Some of the people on my friends list are old Bay Area G’s: Denizens of Oakland, San Francisco, but mostly Berkeley. I have a lot of Berkeley High School alumni on my friends list, as well as a lot of Berkeley characters. (And there are a lot of characters in Berkeley, believe me!) Then I have lots of scene friends from my clubbing days back in the 1980’s Bay Area: Punks and Goths and party animals. They oftentimes get cross referenced with my recovery community, those people who dived too deeply into lives of excess and have now cleaned up their act.

Then there’s my fellow fitness nerds. I run long distance races, and I also attend a fitness boot camp at least once a week. I have a lot of fitness and running friends, some of whom also crossover from my clean and sober tribe, and some who are members of other tribes.

Then there’s other sub-tribes: Coworkers, friends of friends, partners of friends, old college classmates, and so on. When I look at profiles listed in the People I May Know I check to see how many mutual friends we have. If there’s enough mutual friends, or if they look interesting enough, I take a closer look by checking out their profile. Sometimes the profile pic tells me all I need to know. Dreadlocks, tattoos, and piercings? From my clubber tribe. Post-race photo of them holding up their latest marathon medal? Fellow fitness nerd. Waving around a pro-vegan protest sign? Most likely a Berkeley G and fellow progressive activist.

If the profile pic doesn’t give enough clues I look at our mutual friends and that tells me what I need to know: Berkeley OG, Fellow underground scenester, workout nerd, or some random bohemian. Occasionally I’ll find someone who knows a few people from some of my tribes that usually don’t intersect: They know a few of my workout nerd friends but also a few crusty ol’ punks from my days of chaos. Sometimes they can be puzzlers. “How the hell do they know my partner in crime from the 80’s and my trainer at bootcamp?”

I add almost none of them. I don’t usually add people to my Facebook unless there’s a personal connection. Some people may add Facebookers they don’t personally know if they have common interests, but that’s not me. There has to be a common thread somewhere. Most recently I added a few pinball people as I’ve dived into the Bay Area pinball community earlier this year and made a few new friends. That’s a lot different than what I used to do, back in the Livejournal and MySpace days when I would add all kinds of people I didn’t personally know, people I had gotten to know in communities or if we had mutual interests. I have made a lot of friends that way, especially from Livejournal, people I refer to as friends and have known for years now, even though we’ve never met face-to-face. (Someday I want to travel across the country and finally meet all of them!)

Then there are some casual friends and past acquaintances that I didn’t add, people from the old days, friends of friends, or old classmates. Even though I didn’t add them, if they sent me a Facebook friend request I would approve it. I don’t feel the need to reach out and make them part of my online tribe, but if they asked I would think “Sure, why not. Come on in.”

On rare occasions the People You May Know function will pop up an old friend. I found a long-lost and treasured friend I had not seen or heard from in more than a decade. I was quite delighted to find her again. Then there was a nice little mix up. I saw the name of an old high school friend in the People You May Know, someone I had not seen or heard from her in literally a couple of decades. I clicked on her profile. Turns out it wasn’t her, it was another woman living in Berkeley who just happened to have the same first and last name as my old high school friend. She got suggested to me because she’s a fellow fitness bootcamper and we have some mutual bootcamp friends. I told her this story and she said I should go ahead and send her a friend request, which I did, increasing the workout nerd quotient of my friends list!

What about your tribes? Sure there’s family and coworkers, but what other tribes do you add to your friends list? Do you add people you know from other communities? People you don’t know personally? Do you ever look through the People You May Know feature? Let me know in the comments!