YouTube protocol/etiquette question

So a guy named 'RealtorClint' subscribed to me on YouTube, his videos are all about loans and short sales. Typically, if I get a subscription from a musician or uke enthusiast, I sub back, but I don't know about this one. He also wants me to be his "friend".

Should I just ignore it? Thank him for the sub, and just move on? Or what?

Dougf said:

So a guy named 'RealtorClint' subscribed to me on YouTube, his videos are all about loans and short sales. Typically, if I get a subscription from a musician or uke enthusiast, I sub back, but I don't know about this one. He also wants me to be his "friend".

Should I just ignore it? Thank him for the sub, and just move on? Or what?

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For me? It's spam. Ignore it.

I get these from all sorts of salesmen, ignore it.
I'd guess he has never looked at any of your vids, he's just advertising.

I got an invite also, I just deleted the request from my inbox.

If the guy subscribed to you, he may have an interest in your music, when he's not working on the subjects he's making his own videos about. You can thank him if you want, but you're under no obligation to subscribe back to him.

Friend requests are another story. Personally, I ignore all friend requests if they aren't uke players, or other musicians whose music interests me. A lot of friend requests are spammed to lots of random people. It's a way for people with something to sell to get eyes on their videos without spending to advertize. With the people you subscribe to, you can choose to see only the videos they upload themselves, and not have your front page filled with every video that they happen to "like". With the people you friend, you don't get that option. Some of these folks like 10 videos every day, and in a couple of cases I've deleted people as friends because my YouTube front page was filled with all of their random daily "likes".

I agree, you are under no obligation whatsoever to sub him back I would say. Sub if you're interested, don't bother if you're not.

-F

Sniff, sniff, smellum like spam (and not the good stuff). I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, though, because it could be somebody just getting interested in music/ukes. I don't return the sub, and certainly not a friend request, on anybody though unless they've got some kind of content that looks like something I'd be interested in (i.e. music, uke, guitar, etc.) or unless I know them from here.

Another thing you'll sometimes get is a friendly sounding comment to one of your videos, then you look at the address line and see that they sent the comment to dozens of videos. When I get those I KNOW it's SPAM and I block the user.