Random friend request

Do you also get these random friend requests? And how do you react? 

Usually I ask why they want to be friends. Just now I got one that blocked me and withdrawed the friend request. But usually there's no answer. Seems like most of these people are spammers or just want to promote their club.

As you mentioned, asking why they want to be friends is a good initial step. Genuine users will typically provide a reasonable answer.

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It might be because there is an achievement/award for having 100 friends - called Social Butterfly. Some people, including myself, like to collect the awards. Hopefully it isn't offensive to others. I mean you occasionally meet genuinely nice people by befriending strangers, that you probably wouldn't otherwise have met. Or you can easily remove them as friends in future if it turns out badly. Hopefully this makes sense. And by the way, if you'd like to friend request me I won't say no. I don't have my own club and I'm not going to spam you. Cheers!

When I was first on chess.com, I declined almost all friend requests (that lasted about a year maybe?), then I started accepting some friend requests selectively by usually messaging them why they wanted to be chess.com friends; anyone who responded with a decent answer I accepted. The ones who never responded, I declined.

After that, I recognized that chess.com friend requests doesn't mean much anyway. My standards were too high because I was treating it like in-person friendship. Online, people will send you a friend request because they like your profile picture, or they want the Social Butterfly chess.com achievement, or other similar reasons. I like helping them out and now I accept almost all friend requests.

It is super rare I decline a request. You'd need to give me a reason NOT to accept a friend request.