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Friendship advice can get invasive fast. Some people call that “helping”.

So when one sister plans to monitor a friend’s new college friendships, alarms go off.

Their parents defend the idea.

See why “creepy” feels pretty accurate.

AITA: told my sister that the way she was behaving was creepy

So my sister (18F) and I (16M) have a mutual friend (also 18F) who’s going to college later this summer in Boston, moving from our little town in the middle of the woods to a city with hundreds of thousands of people.

This friend is pretty introverted and doesn’t make new friends very easily, and my sister (who’s going to a completely different college) is demanding that our friend put herself out there and talk to as many new people as possible, because in her mind, if you don’t immediately make friends within the first few weeks of college, you won’t ever make friends for the rest of your academic career, or something.

It’s really not that serious.

In order to prevent our friend from lying just to get my sister to leave her alone, my sister has decided that whenever this friend claims to have met someone that she likes, she will search through social media in order to find said person and “stalk them” (yes, she really used those exact words), in order to I guess make sure they’re someone our friend would really get along with??

As an introverted person myself, I know that kind of behavior would creep me out, not only if I was in my friend’s position, but also if I was the person being stalked on social media without my consent.

Her parents don’t think this is creepy.

I’m not sure how my friend feels about this, or if she even knows what’s happening.

My sister first told me about her plan during our lunch period, and then brought it up again at the dinner table with my parents around, and she seemed weirdly proud of herself too.

At this point I got kinda fed up and told my sister that she was being really creepy towards our friend, but both of my parents defended her, saying that “it’s for [friend’s name]’s own good” and my sister was “just trying to help her”.

I talked to my mom later about it, and she said that while it was a little weird, that I should just let my sister do what she wants with her friends and not interfere.

She’s still not convinced this is okay.

Anyway, since the two most trusted adults in my life aren’t really doing anything, I thought it would be just a swell idea to ask for advice from strangers on the internet, so what do y’all think?

Is my sister being weird, or is this just something that normal friends do?

So what does the internet think? Is her sister being weird?

Let’s see what the comments on Reddit had to say:

Here’s a vote for the sister being very weird.

A warning would be merited.

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This is super weird.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a sister who let her brother maintain a shared car for years, and doesn’t want to start doing it herself now that he has his own car.

Bottom line:

His sister planned to search social media for every new person their introverted friend met, supposedly to make sure they were acceptable.

Commenters overwhelmingly agreed the behavior crossed a line, with several warning that the friend deserved to know what was being planned.

Nothing says “make new friends” like assigning yourself as their unpaid background investigator.

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Author

Chris Allen