David Weinberger writes pretty sensibly about why Friendster and its ilk are silly and probably doomed. I fooled around with Friendster a little and actually had an interesting correspondence with a fellow I'd heard of but hadn't met, but who's connected to me a couple of different ways. But generally I don't use it much and only stay up there so that my friend D, the most aggressive online dater and flirter I know, continues to have access to the hot chicks he's connected to via friends of friends of my friends. He insists.
Anyway the little screenshot there on JOHO and the simple truth that David points out, that most relationships are better left vague, is pretty true. When I first logged onto Friendster I surfed around and kind of did a land grab to build my collection of friends. And in doing that I "grabbed" a guy I know not very well, and, upon reflection, decided I didn't like that much. He linked to me, but then emailed me to ask why I'd linked to him, which was strange, as it required a sort of uncomfortable explicitness of what was really a vague intention to learn more about this person. And then I had to explain my invitation to link to him, "Er, cause I know you a little and think you're reasonably smart and kind of interesting." Which began a conversation that made me more aware of the fact that, in fact, I didn't like him all that much and certainly wouldn't call him a friend. And a few days later I de-linked to him -- another uncomfortably explicit signal that would never happen in real life. Anyway, it highlight's the point David's making, which is that in real life we drift in and out of different levels of intimacy with people, and that life is better if you don't label the relationship you have at a particular moment of time. It's certainly not going to be true for more than that moment, and the act of defining it can change it, and if you don't want to have this fakey-fake "everyone I know is my best friend" profile it's hard to be truthful about the rich vagueness of your social web.
Comments