Facebook is now huge, just as MySpace was before it. In the time we have with it before its inevitable collapse, what does it say about the people who use it?
Friends. “Friends”. Apps. Pics. Video. Status updates. Relationship status. Networks, primary and secondary. Security permissions based on dividing all contacts into the groups “Allowed,” “Restricted” and “Work”. Yes, it’s the social networking Tower of Babel known as Facebook. I used to be a Facebook optimist; a purist even. I objected to the “new” Facebook, and the introduction of 3rd party Apps. I just found it comfortingly clean, neat and organized. Now that I can see the decline of the site in the near future, I began to wonder why we use these types of sites at all, and why do we do it in certain predictable ways?
“Friends”
If you’re a massive social butterfly with ADD who is generally liked by everyone, I suppose you could maintain 50 genuine friends. Of course you would have to drop out of school and never get a job, but I suppose you could do it. But why do we feel the need to be connected to friend number 78: the girl you haven’t spoken to since high school, never liked, were never acknowledged by, and now live 15 states away from. And then you see a news feed item one day that tells you she changed her relationship status from “In a relationship” to “Engaged”. You ponder your own failed relationships for 30 seconds before the phone rings, reminding you that you should get back to work.
I am literally going to list the first 10 “friends” I have on my Facebook list: my former jackass roommate’s fiancee, a jackass coworker, a high school friend’s slutty sister, that high school friend who I’ve seen once since graduation, a legendarily smart guy who moved away in 2nd grade, a townie I know socially, a girl I met through a friend of a friend who dated an acquaintance at one time, my former roommate who I have been trying to hang with lately, a long-time friend I see pretty frequently, a girl from high school that I have no association with whatsoever. So using this as an indicator, 70% of my friends could be eliminated (the friend with the slutty sister, the second roommate, and the long-time friend stay). So flip that around and that’s a 233% excess of friends!
So why do we have so many “friends”? Well, we’re either bored and want to see those news feed items, or we have incredibly fragile egos and need to feel that they’re reading our news feed stories too. Welcome to the Web 2.0 generation, you have no life and low self-esteem because of it.
Wed, Feb 4, 2009, by Jacobo Forte
Social Networks