You’re halfway through your coffee, minding your business, and suddenly: ping. A follow. A friend request. A connection invite on LinkedIn from someone you’ve never met, never worked with, and whose only visible skill seems to be breathing and uploading gym selfies.
So what’s going on? Why do people randomly add strangers online? Are they networking? Flirting? Lost? Or just digitally bored? I can think of 5 main categories:
1. The Digital Drivepast Flirt: Some people treat social media like a giant dating app, regardless of platform. Instagram? Flirt. Facebook? Flirt. LinkedIn? Professional flirt. They scroll, spot a face they like, and throw out a request like it’s a rose on Love Island. Sometimes they add dozens of people a day. Quantity over quality. It’s not personal and that’s exactly the point. They don’t know you. They just liked your face, your vibe, or the fact that you’re not posting hourly Minions memes. That’s the bar now.
Expect their first message to be : ASL – some things rarely change !
2. The Lonely Wanderer: Others are just… lonely. The pandemic, remote work, or even just the numbing hum of daily life has made social media a weird cocktail of connection and emptiness. Adding someone new can feel like maybe opening a door to something interesting: a conversation, a laugh, someone who may not leave them on read. They might not even have an agenda. They’re just bored, and you looked human. Some are so lonely they won’t care if you’re a catfish, it’s a connection.
3. The Status Collector: There’s also the follower-hoarder, the ones who want big numbers, even if it’s all built on sand. They follow in hopes of follow-backs. They send out connection requests like confetti. They want to seem “in demand,” even if they couldn’t pick you out of a police line-up. They want to hit that “500+” listing on LinkedIn. They might never engage, but your name on their list helps inflate the illusion.
My suggestion: add and wait a day then delete if they don’t reply to a message suggesting an online chat. Curate that friend list too.
4. The Actual Networker (rare species): Sometimes it is professional. Maybe you’re in the same field. Maybe you’ve got mutuals or overlapping interests. But here’s the trick: real networkers usually say something. A note. A “Saw your post on X / We never got a chance to chat in a break out room, would love to connect.” If you get a silent add with no context and zero shared interests, it’s probably not that – see (3) above.
5. The Avoidantly Attached Browser: This one is quietly fascinating. People with avoidant attachment styles often struggle with emotional closeness, but that doesn’t mean they don’t crave connection. It just means they prefer it on their terms: distant, low-pressure, and easily escapable. So what do they do? They scroll. They follow. They add you. To them, hovering over your profile or watching your Stories offers just enough of a hit to satisfy a momentary need: attention, arousal, intrigue, all this and more without requiring any real engagement. It’s like flirting with intimacy from behind glass. No messages. No vulnerability. Just digital proximity, which lets them feel close without the risk of getting hurt, seen, or relied on. In some ways, it’s not even about you. It’s about soothing something restless inside them: a hunger they don’t fully understand and don’t plan to address. You’re just the momentary fix. They want the comfort of being around something human, but without the emotional mess of having to actually relate to it. It’s connection without commitment. Interest without interaction. A performance of closeness that keeps them at a safe distance from anything real.
What do you do with all these followers? Honestly? Whatever feels right. Curate your digital space. Protect your peace. And don’t feel guilty declining or even deleting random requests: it’s your feed, so your energy and/or your rules.
But maybe, just maybe, give a second look now and then. Some of the best connections start with a “who is this?”, but only if it’s followed by substance, not just a “hi” and silence.
Don’t forget: the algorithm is always watching. Almost in a creepy, tinfoil-hat way, more in a “you paused on that for half a second, so now we’ll serve it to you on repeat” kind of way. Whether it’s cat videos, gym thirst traps, or those suspiciously glossy women posing by pools with motivational quotes about yoga, the machine doesn’t care what you like, only what you linger on. Hover, click, zoom in just once and suddenly it assumes that’s your entire personality. It learns your digital hesitations and feeds them back to you like a mirror made of dopamine. Which means even if you didn’t mean to stare at that influencer’s bikini reel, well, congratulations, you’ll be seeing six more by dinner tonight. Perfect food for the avoidant though – they lap it all up!
One thing is for sure though: in a world of digital noise, the rarest thing is someone who actually shows up like a human, but when they do, you will know it. Because you’ve seen what they have been posting on LinkedIn or their own social media. And that’s unmistakably real.
