An American In Taiwan

Facebook is a virus. I’m convinced of that. It also cheapens the word “friend”. I’ve deleted my Facebook account once already. Not disabled. Deleted. As in, email-support-team-and-have-them-wipe-the-account delete. And you know what?

It was the best thing I did that year.

Facebook, the uber social networking site (according to some sources it has 5 times the pictures of Flickr and every ten days grows by the total number of Twitter users), has done to social relationships what Friends did to American comedy: it’s so popular it ruined it. If you need more proof that Facebook has jumped the shark, take a guess at the demographics: the biggest group is the 35-44 crowd. That’s right. Office workers, stepdads, substitute teachers. It’s a drug, and they’re addicted.

We all have those Facebook addict friends. You know, the ones who take every quiz made, or who have 20,000 friends but have never lived in more than one place, or who upload pictures of everything they see.

You know that little exercise motivational speakers use when talking to crowds? The one that says, “One out of three people is insert-embarrassing-trait-here. Look to your left, then look to your right. If you don’t see that person, then guess what.” Well… look around. This could be you, and you wouldn’t even know it.

Worse than the Crackbook addicts are the people who request your friendship over… and over… and over…. Here’s a tip: if you send someone a friend request and they haven’t accepted it in, let’s say, two weeks, well, guess what: they ignored it. That’s right. Someone doesn’t want to be your friend.

I know it hurts. Feel free to take a minute. I’m not going anywhere.

Nobody wants to think that someone would deny a friend request. It’s like finding out you have bad breath or that you’re less-than-gifted in bed. You feel hurt, betrayed, even embarrassed.

But that’s just it. A friend on Facebook isn’t really your friend if you haven’t seen them in person in more than six months. I occasionally get friend requests from people I went to high school with. People I haven’t seen or heard from or even thought of in nearly ten years. People that, even back then, I didn’t talk to unless I was forced to.

We’re not friends! We weren’t then, and we aren’t now!

Are peoples’ lives so empty that they only find meaning by scrolling through their friends’ friends, picking out people they at one point knew, even in passing? Get a hobby. Seriously. Build ships in bottles or something. That might make you look boring, but at least you don’t look desperate.

My friends list used to be huge. I was just as guilty as anyone else. I was an undergraduate, I friended everyone I knew in high school and every random person I met at a party. Then I realized that a man’s worth is not based on the number of friends he has, but the quality of those friends. So, how many “friends” do I have now? Thirty seven. Co-workers, colleagues, people about whom I really care, and, of course, my Schmoopie.

This blog also shows up on my Facebook as a note, so if you’re reading this on Facebook, good for you. I’ve deemed you worthy. I’m sure that means a lot.

So go ahead. Prune your list. Hit “Ignore” and feel good about it. That guy you think you might have had 3rd period History with back sophomore year of high school who you maybe think married that girl he was with… is not your friend. Maybe you were close back then. Maybe he’s even a nice person.

But he’s not your friend.

Tags: annoyances, facebook, life 2.0, social networks

This entry was posted by 美國人 on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 9:25 and is filed under Complaints, Non-Taiwan Related, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.