Following people without knowing that they don't like it.

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It is not uncommon for me to hear "why are you following me"?

This has happened to me many times growing up. For example, there was one time when I may have been about fourteen years old that I was hanging out with a group of other girls at a family picnic. We were playing a game where we pretend to be super heros.

I had no idea that I was doing anything wrong, but one of them snapped at me. Now I think that the reasons for this was probably because I was two to three years older than them, and she saw me as a big kid "following" them when I shouldn't have been.

To her I seemed unwelcome, but the people my age were standing in a crowd chatting. Knowing people from my age group, I had a sense that they would be talking about things that I find to be embarrassing subjects, or I just could not relate to the topic. Does anything like this ever happen to you? If so, please give an example.

It happens when people are trying to embarrass me. My mum told me that people do this to unify themselves as a group so they can connect as friends but both she and I do not believe this is real friendship. For example, when someone who is cool has said something to me and I try to reply, they will start making fun of me and saying stuff like "are you trying to stalk us bruv" and it makes me sad.

It really didn't feel friendly and it made me mad. The people who do this are not nice people, cool people rarely are. I agree, in the majority of cases, I am too upset to reply.

"Don't follow me" were the words I heard at age six. I think it means now when someone says this, they are not interested in your friendship so you just walk away. It's another rejection phrase. Also I remember my own friends complaining I always follow them. I think it meant they didn't want my company and didn't want me around. Not that I was doing anything wrong. In 6th grade I would get told to please go away. I used to think they were just being mean but now I think they were just being honest and I didn't pick up on hints so they had to be blunt. What is a subtle way of not wanting someone around you know.

To stop inviting them to gatherings, to no longer make any effort to communicate with them, it is a pretty long list.

On yes, I've had that annoying phrase said to me, mostly at secondary school. I was always OK with recognising body language, but because sometimes I felt so lonely and desperate, I just latched myself on to a certain person or group of people who seemed friendly to me, and hoped that I could make a deeper friendship by ''following'' them, but unfortunately making friends was a bit more complex than that.

When I was 14, I was so tired of feeling rejected from the other girls in my class, that I decided it was time to make some new friends. I knew of a group of girls who always hung in a 6, and they were in the same year as me but not the same class. One day I saw them sitting on the school field together at lunch time, and I sat near them, and scooted closer to them every few minutes, and they sort of let me in their group. They were talking and laughing about interesting things, instead of the same old boring things other girls harped on about. I actually felt a connection, and they seemed quite welcoming. Then for the rest of that week I found myself waiting for them at lunch times and between lessons, and walking about with them. Deep down I knew they started getting a little annoyed and wondering why I was attaching myself on to their group all of a sudden. But I was hoping that they might accept me in the end, since they seemed nice people. But then I found they crept into the office and told on me, then when I was seen waiting about outside the office for them, the adult they told about me guessed who I was, and brought me into a room for a chat. I can't remember exactly what was said, but I know it was a polite way of telling me that I was ''freaking them out''. So, feeling rather rejected and humiliated, I came back out and felt so lonely and depressed. I really don't know what got into me that week as it wasn't like me to just follow a group of kids around and ignore all non-verbal signs, which I always could take notice of even at a young age. I think it might have been the start of my depression caused by loneliness.

I still regret doing that to this day, and I'm so scared that will come back to haunt me later on in life. Well, at least it taught me a lesson not to do a thing like that again.

So it looks like a few people including me know what this is like. All in all, it looks like the early teen or tween years kind of trend in the examples. This might be because differences in people become more obvious, and there is the pressure to fit in during the adolescent years.