Urban Vancouver

Facebook friendsluts

By samanthaorwell on February 17, 2008 - 5:28pm

http://thevancouvermanifesto.blogspot.com/2008/02/facebook-friend-sluts....

You are a facebook slut if you
1) Find acquaintences on your friends' friends list and add them as your own friend list very well knowing your own social ties to them are weak at best
2) Find old high school classmates on the Facebook groups and add them even though the most contact you could muster up for five years of high school consisted of writing "HAGS" [have a great summer] or "FAGS" [find a guy/girl soon] on their yearbook.
3) Are a "social networker" and add friends left and right to promote your own political agenda (maybe the least offensive of the Facebook friendslut personalities yet still a full-fledged slut].
4) Any of the above, but you are on the receiveing end of the friend invite- i.e. a friendslut adds you and you accept very well knowing he/she/it is a friendslut adding you for the purposes of having a bloated friendslist.

I excpect maybe 200 people to be the max on a real friends list. Maybe more if you're older than 30 or have had a lot of different jobs or gone to a lot of different universities. But even then I'd say 300 is the real limit of real friends.

How can somebody be real friends with that many people Seriously, other than geographical constraints do you really see all of your local friends more than once a month? More once a year? I'd say that everybody in your local geographical network you have to see at the very least once every other month to qualify staying on your friends list. Or at least keep in email/msn proximity to that often. In all liklihood you dont' know that many people and you are simply a friendslut who adds people indiscriminanlty. And to make it worse even if you passed by these people on the street or spend a half hour ride with them onthe bus you probably would avoid eyecontact with them and awkwardly attempt to not be seen by them/ or pretend like you didn't see them.

Now let's go back to number 3 on the list. This is a very special animal of a friendslut. See by very definition of social networker they need a massive net of people who are just acquaintences. And they need not really know every single person on their list. Their profile is for the purpose of gaining support and fans for whatever they do i.e. politics, celebrity. I somewhat support taht but let's think of another avenue you could do all of this. Why not just create a facebook group? It has all of those functions and this way you dont' have a friend limit (yes, they do exist, friendlusts would know), and you can keep your friendslist down to the few that you actually care about or think of as real "friends".

This has all come about because several times now I have been requested by a local Vancouver politician [whose identity I will keep anonymous] to be my friend. Initially, I accepted them if I supported their campaign. Then, feeling like I was crossing the line into facebook friendslut territory, I deleted them. But alas, they tried to add me again! After a few rounds of denying their attempts to court my Facebook friendship, I said yes, left a message on their facebook wall that said, "Stop being a Facebook friendslut- you dont' know me and I don'tknow you. If you want support for your campaign make a group, don't be a friendslut". Predictably, they deleted that message of their wall and have never asked me to be their friend again. Apparently he didn't remember me as the person he kept trying to add until I set myself apart by insulting his Facebook promiscuity.

So I will let you know that my own Facebook profile is one of friendslut status. It is not my own personal account but one to promote my blog and add people who like my blog, of which I'll boast I have quite a few adds (this is really thrilling for me!). I would have started a group but I didn't want my blog to be attached to my own personal Facebook page as I would like to feel free to write on issues that would otherwise might affect my career or other social affiliation.

So while I am still guilty, I am still critical of all these day-to-day facebook friendsluts who indiscriminantly add people for which they have no real social affiliation.

The End.

http://thevancouvermanifesto.blogspot.com/2008/02/facebook-friend-sluts....