Pretext: If you are a college student or recent grad you are familiar with the phenomenon of Facebook. If you’re not then think MySpace except supposedly less creepy because you don’t “meet” people online with it. With Facebook you meet people in the real world and then you “friend” them online in an attempt to generate an online community that mirrors your actual social circle.
Does your facebook homepage ever tell you that "your friend so-n-so just updated their facebook picture" and you squint at the little tiny square and the name beneath and say "Who the f*** are you?"
I've done this quite a bit in the past month. Apparently a lot of you I don't remember have been getting a little profile picture happy. Maybe it's not that I don't remember you, maybe it's just that I don't remember why I care about you. Sometimes I can figure it out, and I'll go "oooooh party junior year, yeah you were cool" and then I'll remember that we only partied once and you were actually just visiting from a campus which I have no idea where it's located. Well other than the fact that it was in the state of Indiana because it was called Indiana something or the other. There are other people though, people who supposedly went to the same university as me that make me go "huh?"
Now in the past I have been told that it is rude not to friend someone if they ask and even then I thought that was bullshit. Someone even went so far as to tell me I was mean -- which I protested at the time, but really I'd rather be mean than a push over, no news there. I mean, honestly, just because I know your name does not mean that I give two shits about you. Face it though, we've all friended people we only gave one shit about, or maybe a shit and a half, simply because they asked. However, I draw the line at people whom I would avoid talking to in real life. If I will go out of my way not to make eye contact with you because making eye contact would mean we would have to say hi and I don't want to even say hi then I will not friend you. I was trying to explain this when I got called “mean” as noted above. But really, if I don't even want to talk to you why would I want your face on my friend wall or your information coming up on my "home" page every time you tinker with the quotes on your profile?
What's even worse though is when you friend someone just to up your friend count in a particular area. Don't act like it's never crossed your mind. I know very well that some of you do this. Some of you have even told me that you want to break X-number on your friend count and then happily inform me when you reach it. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with friended every member of your seminar just because you can, however if there is someone in that seminar whom you would rather strangle than speak to, you, my friend, have an issue.Maybe the whole thing is harsh.
But what does it matter in the long run? Whomever I "friend" now who isn't really one of my real friends in another year's time -- with my granny memory -- is just going to be a tiny blurry square under the updated pictures section that I stare at going "who the f*** are you?"
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