Is It Weird to Keep Notes
on Your Friends?

The short answer: writing down that your mate is walking the Overland Track in April, so you can ask how it went, is no stranger than putting her birthday in a calendar. Keeping a running file on her moods, her money and what her ex said is something else.

A lot of the discomfort people feel about a personal CRM seems to come from not knowing which of those two things it is. So it’s worth taking the objection seriously.

What people actually say

Whenever a personal CRM turns up on Hacker News, or someone asks in a forum whether their notes on friends are normal, the same few arguments appear. These are the ones I kept seeing, with links to the threads so you can read them in full.

“If you really cared, you’d remember”

In a 2020 Hacker News thread about Monica, an open-source personal CRM, one commenter argued that caring about someone means making the effort to remember them, not saving them in a database. They admitted a gut feeling of inauthenticity in their own birthday messages (comment). The replies were the most persuasive part of the thread. One person asked whether writing it down wasn’t exactly that effort (comment). Another compared it to taking notes in class so you remember the lesson (comment). A third put friends’ birthdays in a calendar because they “care enough to work around my own failings” (comment).

“It feels cold”

Someone who tried Monica in 2019 liked the features but said tracking friendships that way felt cold, cynical and controlling, and added that this was about the practice, not the app (comment). In the same thread, another reader pointed out that “CRM” means customers, and that in much of Europe the word alone would put people off (comment).

“It’s a dossier”

When someone asked Hacker News in 2022 for an app to keep notes on friends and family, one reader said it sounded a bit like “personal Stasi dossiers”, then suggested a spreadsheet anyway (comment). A 2020 commenter drew the line at keeping more than you’d naturally remember, which they found intrusive (comment).

“What if it gets out?”

Another 2020 commenter asked people building these tools to imagine the worst user and the worst leak: a stalker ex or a data broker holding detailed notes on someone (comment).

One long argument, start to finish

The fullest version is a 2024 thread on the Obsidian forum, started by someone who writes up detailed notes after time with a friend and wondered if that was strange (thread). The first reply said yes, and that they’d reconsider the friendship if they found out (reply). Later, one person was a flat no for friends as opposed to sales leads (reply), while another compared it to a diary, which most people wouldn’t object to (reply).

The most thoughtful objection was about being on record at all: a journal about one particular person feels different from appearing as a side character in someone’s diary (reply, reply). And the thread’s best rule of thumb came near the end: write notes that would leave the person flattered, not violated, if they ever saw them (reply).

Paying attention, or keeping a file

Read the threads side by side and the objections aren’t really to writing things down. They’re to what gets written, why, and who might see it. That gives a fairly clear line.

It also fits the one study of creepiness I could find. In a 2016 online survey of 1,341 people, the things rated likeliest in a creepy person included watching someone before talking to them and asking for personal details about their family. The authors’ explanation is that feeling creeped out is a response to not knowing whether someone is a threat (McAndrew and Koehnke, 2016). A note made from what a friend chose to tell you adds no uncertainty. Digging for what they didn’t offer does.

The last row matters more than it looks. The point of remembering that Mel booked the Overland Track is to ask how the training walks are going, not to show her you know. In studies of conversations between strangers, people who asked more follow-up questions were better liked (Huang and colleagues, 2017). A note is useful because it turns into a question. If you find yourself wanting to quote it back at someone, it’s become the other thing.

What to write, and what to leave out

Worth writing down

Plans and dates they told you about: the trip, the move, the new job, the exam. Names that matter to them: kids, partners, the dog. Something you’d like to ask next time. Anything either of you promised, like the book you said you’d lend. Where you were, so you can place the conversation later.

Better left out

A secret told in confidence. Things you found by searching for them online. Other people’s news about them. Your diagnosis of their mood, marriage or finances. Anything you’d be embarrassed for them to read over your shoulder. OldMate’s own privacy policy asks the same thing in plainer terms: only add details about other people that you’re entitled to share.

Here is what that looks like for a made-up coffee.

Should you tell them?

There’s no rule. Plenty of people don’t mention their notes, as they wouldn’t mention a diary; the person who started the Obsidian thread decided not to, but to answer honestly if asked (reply). If a friend asks, a plain answer works: you’re forgetful, and you’d rather ask about their trip than forget it. One commenter in the Obsidian thread suggested exactly that, with an offer to stop if it crossed a line for them (reply).

The law isn’t much of a guide here. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner lists an individual acting in their own capacity among those who don’t have responsibilities under the Privacy Act (OAIC). That makes notes on friends a question of manners, not law. Notes kept for work are a different matter; see remembering client details.

How OldMate handles it

OldMate is a personal CRM built for the paying-attention column of that table. What that means in practice:

• It never contacts anyone. No messages, invitations or posts on your behalf. You open a person’s page when you want to.
• People appear only when you say something about them. OldMate doesn’t read your phone’s address book.
• There’s nothing to share a page through. No feed, no shared pages, and nothing a Contact can see.
• It keeps your words. Each page is built from what you said or typed, and you review the details before you save.

It’s also worth knowing where the words go, because the “what if it gets out” worry is fair. Your people, notes and recordings are saved to your OldMate account. To sort your notes, OldMate sends what its AI features need to its AI providers (OpenAI and TypeSafe, and Google for older versions of the app), with the permission you give when you sign up, not linked to your account; their terms don’t let them train their models on it. OldMate doesn’t sell your information or use your notes for advertising, and deleting your account removes what it holds. The privacy policy has the details.

Whatever you use, the test from the forum still holds: if they read it, would they feel flattered?

Read next

For what a personal CRM is and when you don’t need one, start with the explainer. For the habit itself, read how to remember details about people you meet, and for what to do with a note before a catch-up, questions to ask a friend you haven’t seen in a while. On why small remembered things count, see the power of micro-support.