It's an imposition, because it puts me in a position of either having to respond, or having to refuse to respond.
Creepy, according to Webster's, mean "annoyingly unpleasant". That works for me.
In terms of the last question, I think Mark Chu-Carroll, in the original post, explains nicely. He doesn't feel any particular connection to the folks from his school-- even the ones who didn't torture him. If he had, he surely would have been in touch with them in the past 25 years in some other way. If the weak social connection really had potential, why did it take Facebook as a catalyst?
I don't think a facebook-friend request from someone I haven't seen in 15 years annoyingly unpleasant, or an imposition. At the absolute worst, it's a minor distraction to deal with, and frequently they are a welcome diversion. Sometimes those weak connections share interesting articles or crack me up with status updates.
Consider ex-classmates who spent 25 years living on different coasts and working in different fields, and now they both have a similar hobby and find they have a lot to share. The point of socializing is to discover that sort of thing, and the point of Facebook is to connect people, to re-open those social possibilities and leave them open. Even if they go dormant quickly(which doesn't hurt anybody), they're still there.
Suppose I am living in NY City and looking for something to do this summer. Suppose one of my former classmates is looking for a few more people for his softball team. Pre-facebook, I probably don't even realize he lives nearby. Post-facebook, I might join the team and re-establish the lost connection. Maybe it'll work great, and we'll start doing other things together, or maybe it won't work out and we'll go back to doing our own thing. Facebook will have been the catalyst.
I disagree. Former classmates often share quite a bit. There's likely a slightly greater level of trust and accountability than with a total stranger, and there's a good chance it'll be easy to find a topic of conversation to start with. I also know that I, personally, would be more likely to do a small favor for a former classmate than a complete stranger. For example, if I knew via facebook that one of my former classmates was an Erlang programmer, and one of my other friends was looking to hire one, I might try and hook them up. I wouldn't bother to go looking for random stranger Erlang programmers.
Being former classmates isn't like being close family, but it doesn't mean absolutely nothing either. It's a minor but significant reason why you might want to connect with someone using facebook. A similar minor but significant reason might be that you just met at a party last week and seemed to get along really well.
And again, the point is that there's usually nothing to get creeped out about. If you'd rather focus on new friends and forget old ones that's fine, but an old connection isn't absolutely nothing.
Incidentally, I consider the word "creepy" to have more of a threatening connotation than simply annoying and unpleasant. An old, dark, abandoned house is creepy, you don't know what's inside and it might be threatening. A guy is creepy when he doesn't know a girl but stares at her for 20 minutes at the bar then follows her home. Reconnecting with old classmates who have fallen out of touch is not creepy, at least not by default.
Creepy, according to Webster's, mean "annoyingly unpleasant". That works for me.
In terms of the last question, I think Mark Chu-Carroll, in the original post, explains nicely. He doesn't feel any particular connection to the folks from his school-- even the ones who didn't torture him. If he had, he surely would have been in touch with them in the past 25 years in some other way. If the weak social connection really had potential, why did it take Facebook as a catalyst?