I have been going through some sort of crazy boom in friend requests on Facebook over the last couple of weeks. I've come to the point where the only time I question whether or not I'll "accept" a friend request is if we have no friends in common (as in, "hmmmm, then how did you find me?) or if something catches my eye and triggers a red alert.

Right now I have someone just sitting in my friend request pile, waiting for an answer.

I don't know what I'm going to do.

I sent her a message that just politely inquired as to why she chose that particular photo as her current profile picture, but I haven't heard back from her yet. I don't know if she doesn't check FB often, if she's not going to answer, or if she's trying to think up a really good explanation.

Because her profile photo is a photo of MY work. 

The thing is, I don't know her motivation. It's obviously watermarked with my name. That makes it more difficult to pass the nails off as her own work. So there's always the possibility that she just really liked that photo and has no intention of trying to claim it as her own. Then again ... I've already had one tech use my work in her advertising, passing my photo off as her own work despite the obvious watermark with my name running right through it!

I'd really like it if she just answered my question. But I guess it doesn't really matter if I accept her friend request or not — it's not like I'll be preventing her from finding even more photos of my work.

But, aside from trying to decide if I'm flattered or incensed by her use of my photo as her profile pic, it has me looking twice at all my other "friends" who have photos of nails as their profile pics.

I realize that when I see those profile photos, I rather assume that those are examples of either YOUR work, or the nails that YOU are wearing. It has never occurred to me to use a photo of say, Catherine Wong's work as MY profile photo. Unless they were nails that she did on me. This sudden realization that some people would choose to use a photo of nails they like rather than nails they've done (or have some personal connection to) strikes me as curious altogether.

But then, this is why I watermark 'em all now. They show up in the strangest places!