For whatever it's worth, I was one of the 1,138 – but, of course had no clue that I was x of N requests at the time rather than 1 of 1 or 2... but it seemed odd

For whatever it's worth, I was one of the 1,138 – but, of course had no clue that I was x of N requests at the time rather than 1 of 1 or 2... but it seemed odd. I've been on Metafilter for about a decade and I've interacted with Matt enough to know who he is – but also little enough to be completely surprised by the request. I accepted it and then followed it up a shortly after with a note asking if we'd interacted more than I was aware of or if there was some other story to the request. It always seems better to be receptive but questioning to me – who knows what the story is behind all sorts of events in life.. Anyway, Matt was kind enough to respond and explain what happened. I thanked him and removed the connection at that point – I try only to keep connections with people I really interact with (or have interacted with) enough to want at least recall, but preferably sit down with and have coffee/beer/dinner, etc. if we were to cross paths.