Tbh even though I’ve only had an account here for the past two or three days, I don’t feel like the buddies system would be any different from your average friends/mutuals thing.
Perhaps some people might just like your vibe or the way you convey your thoughts and send a request. Maybe you’ve replied to one of their threads and said something that they thought was meaningful or helpful. Perhaps you’re already both somewhat communicative with each other. But I think ultimately you decide who you’re comfortable with adding as a buddy. Maybe you don’t mind adding random people and that’s okay too!
If you feel worried about ignoring or declining requests you can always just write smth short in your bio that goes like “please don’t feel offended if I don’t accept buddy requests, it’s nothing personal, I just prefer to add people that I know/ am more familiar with”. (Doesn’t have to be worded that way exactly)
This is all just assuming on my part though, maybe there is a secret melonland forums code for the buddies system but I personally doubt it’s that deep lol The site is already very casual as it is