Friendship 2.0
Will you be my friend? That’s the latest question zipping around the Internet these days. No doubt if you have a pulse you have at least heard about Facebook.com. This interesting little website is one of many categorized as a social network. And it seems to be a race to get as many “friends” as possible. For those new to this sort of thing, allow me to clarify a few points to help you better socialize in cyberspace.
The concept of friendship is defined a little looser in the world of Facebook. You see, everyone who views your profile can see exactly how many (and who) you are “friends” with. As a result, the traditional definition of being someone’s friend has changed. I’ve taken the liberty of including a new definition (soon to be included on Wikipedia.com, another discussion entirely) of what I call Friendship 2.0.
Friendship 2.0: Anyone you can find online with whom you can at least remember their first name (or last but not necessarily both), or attended your high school at least one of the years you were there, or the name of your Little League team, or that was in your elementary school class with you, or used to play tennis with your brother’s best friend’s little sister before they moved away to Michigan the year you turned seven.
All of these are appropriate and perfectly acceptable to be added as “friends” on your Facebook profile. In fact, the only exceptions are known felons (unless of course you served time with them or know someone who knows someone who did), real-life pirates (which rarely comes up due to the lack of a reliable Internet connection in the middle of the Atlantic), and ex-girlfriends or boyfriends (whichever you happen to prefer). Adding the latter will undoubtedly be viewed as a desperate attempt to superficially inflate your friend count. And behavior like that just can’t be tolerated.
This online social network is a curious animal indeed. People do all kinds of fun things that were previously impossible on the Internet. Why, just yesterday I got into a food fight with my wife on there. She threw something like some spaghetti at me. Flung a bowl full of oatmeal right at her. It didn’t have much effect, mind you, since it was only virtual oatmeal. The next morning proved much more entertaining when I used the real thing. She seemed really angry. But then I reminded her, “Don’t get mad at me honey. You started it.”
There are, however, a few changes I’d like to see implemented to fully enjoy this newfangled community.
Reject friend requests: A buddy and I were discussing this just yesterday. He was frustrated that he keeps getting friend requests from people he barely knew in high school. Can you believe that? And to make it worse, the only way he could call them out was to accept the request. Otherwise, the only option he had was to ignore it. But this friend likes to speak his mind. He’s also new to Facebook and the protocol involved. So he e-mailed them asking for a way to reject friend requests in style.
Deleting “friends”: Forget about that friend-count nonsense. If someone ticks you off, pull the plug. You can always add them back when you make up. Ignoring someone just doesn’t have the same effect if you can still see their every move on Facebook.
Eliminate “over-posting”: This is a practice I refer to for people who give WAY too many updates about their daily activities. For some reason these are exactly the same people who have absolutely nothing going on in their lives. For the record, I do NOT want a play-by-play of you making a peanut butter sandwich. I’ve made them. It’s not too exciting when I do it either.
Get rid of causes altogether: At first the idea of supporting a cause in a social network seems like a great idea. Then you find out that there are as many causes as there are people and that “supporting” them means clicking the yes button. Another issue is that they can get you into trouble if you aren’t careful. A close friend’s wife sent me a request to join the “support animal rights” group. I gladly accepted with the reply, “I am joining this cause because I believe animals have rights too. The right to be my dinner.” I thought it was funny. I guess I underestimated how important this cause was to her. This was an honest mistake on my part, but removing the “cause” segment of the website would put an end to such tragedies once and for all.
This list is obviously not all-inclusive, but it’s a start. With the right feedback this Internet giant can become something even greater in time. Lots of little web geeks are working tirelessly to make it happen. But the site is utterly useless without us. There is already something like 150 million people on the site and it’s projected to grow to over 5 gazillion by the end of next month.
Yes, things have definitely changed since I was young. Virtually every social action that can be done in real life is now a “reality” on the net. People are dating, doing the dirty, and “hanging out” with their buddies. It’s crazy. I remember when the world used to be much simpler. If you wanted to be friends with someone, you just went out to a movie or something. Or played a round of putt-putt golf. Maybe went outside and threw a baseball in the backyard. You know, something with real live personal interaction. Admittedly, these activities restricted our ability to be super popular. There simply wasn’t enough room in our yard to accommodate 300 people. But then again, I kind of liked it that way.
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