Uh, do I know you?

It's so sad. I only have 57 friends. Well, actually in real life I probably have more than that (59 or 60 at least!), but I only have 57 according to the only arbiter that matters: Friendster. Like many of you out there, I've been lured into the appeal of the so-called "social networking site". I think the first time I heard of Friendster was maybe about 3 years ago at work where a few coworkers had joined and were always arguing over who had more people in their "extended network." I'd over hear one of them saying they had 2.5 million people in their network and then after lunch when the other had added some more friends they'd shoot back with "I got 2.64 mil now BITCH!" They had both been imploring me to join, probably only so they could add more people to their network. But in any case, I finally caved in and joined.

To my surprise though, like most people and these kinds of sites, I instantly became addicted! Not so much at the appeal of having the most friends or people in my network. But just the fact that there was the possibility of finding some new, fascinating people that might share the same interests as me. I wondered if I'd make a new friend that loved Spaceballs or Sleater-Kinney as much as I did! In theory, it's a great idea. Then again, Communism is a great idea in theory too (and we all know how that turned out). After a few days, I pretty much realized that it's a little tough to make new friends on a site like Friendster. I wrote a few people and didn't get much back, so I figured that no one wanted to write back to strange random people that write you. Hell, I didn't want to write back to the strange random people that wrote to me! But as a way to keep track of existing friends, it was pretty good, and it was always fun to exchange embarrassing stories about each other via testimonials.

There were a few problems though. First off, if you know me, you know I pretty much have two names. My official name is Matthew, while I also have my Indian "house name" Binoy that my family and friends call me. So basically my brown friends call me Binoy, while everyone else calls me Matt. Which makes it difficult choosing one name or the other for a site like Friendster, because I worried that if I chose one or the other, half my friends would be like "Who the hell is Binoy?" or "Who the hell is Matt?". I tried to compromise by making my Friendster name "Binoy-Matt" but that was probably the worst choice of all since now all my friends just ask "Why the hell are you Binoy-Matt?". Then secondly, as much as I tried to avoid the social competition part of these sites, it's kind of hard not to. I mean, we all know that these sites pretty much boil down in the end to becoming an online popularity contest. I mean, I was happy with my 40 or 50 friends, but then I slowly noticed people with 100..200...500 friends! I mean, jeez, I guess I can accept that someone might have a 100 or 200 friends, but seriously, who has 500 friends? I don't even think I KNOW 500 people, let alone have them as my friends.

I felt as though I was lagging behind in the numbers, until I examined the friend lists of some of these insanely popular people. Inevitably, they always had large numbers of people that I knew they barely knew, which seemed pretty phony to me. In the words of one of my friends, "It's not called 'Acquaintancester!". I even had a few people that I'd classify as acquaintances that had added me, but I didn't want to add them. I also thought if I denied their request, I'd look like a jerk. So I did the only thing I could do. Just let their request sit there, and hope eventually it would just go away! I waited weeks, months, but every day I logged in, their pending requests were still there! Despite that though, I couldn't bring myself to deny them. Thankfully though, after about 3 1/2 months their requests finally disappeared and I never had to look like the bad guy! Even worse that that, were what I called "Fake Friends." You know, like when someone adds a friend like "University of Pennsylvania" or "iNdIaN HoTTieZ" as their friend. I think that kind of artificially inflates one's numbers. I mean it's pretty easy to have 2.64 million people in your social network when you have "Ohio State University" or "City of Philadelphia" in your friend list! I decided that I wouldn't add any fake friends even it meant sticking with my measly 57 friends.

Despite those concerns though, I was happy with Friendster for a year or two. But then I started hearing about all these other sites cropping up...first Xanga, then LiveJournal and Faceboook, and of course everyone's new favorite site, Myspace. My girlfriend at the time, who was significantly younger (Don't worry Mom, she was legal!), became obsessed with Myspace. She would constantly try to recruit me to join Myspace and would give me daily updates on the cool videos or lists or pictures she had added to her profile. I felt a certain amount of loyalty though to Friendster and didn't want to start all over collecting a new list of friends, so despite her hard sell I always adamantly refused to defect to Myspace. I think in my mind, I thought it was a generational thing. Friendster was for my generation, Xanga was for those a couple years younger, and Myspace was for those a few years younger than that. I was way too old for Myspace. I mean, if I joined Myspace, what would be next? Listening to Ashlee Simpson? Watching Laguna Beach? Dating a 19 year old? Calling myself a "hOtTTie"? Ok, so I did do all of those things, but that's beside the point! I made a profile on Myspace just to be able to check out her new updates, but I pretty much ignored Myspace and never really updated my profile. That is until about a month ago. That's when my cousin-in-law who had gotten into Myspace had written me a message there. I was forced to login to Myspace and I saw that she added me as a friend there! Now I had a dilemma, I knew if I added her as a friend, it was just the beginning of me slowly getting sucked into Myspace which I really didn't want to do. But I love her dearly, and couldn't really deny her being my friend, so I had to add her. Then of course as predicted, soon after my cousin added me as well as my friend Jupey (a.k.a. Sonia). I couldn't deny any of them either! So now my conversion to Myspace had begun. Ugh.

There is one nice thing about Myspace though. Even if you don't have a friend, Myspace gives you a built in friend: Tom! (pictured above). I think Tom might be the guy that founded Myspace. Or perhaps he's just someone that has a bet with someone on who can get the most friends, so he just sits by his computer all day adding friends (52 million at last count). In any event, as soon as you join, you automatically get him as a friend. The more I thought about it though, I really didn't know if I could keep him on my friend list. I mean, I don't know Tom is...I've never even met him! He really was a fake friend too. So for as much as I appreciated his instant, no-questions asked friendship, I decided he had to go and I deleted him.

So for now I only have three Myspace friends, but thats OK by me. I may add a few more here and there, or a picture or two, but I've decided I really can't afford to be actively involved on Friendster AND Myspace. And since I've been on Friendster longer, I think I'm going to keep that one as my friend site of choice. I guess its probably the appropriate choice for me though, since I read that Myspace has completely dwarfed Friendster in terms of popularity. If I'm not going to be popular in life, it probably makes sense that my social networking site isn't popular either.

If you want to be my friend, here's my 57-friend strong Friendster profile and my slowly becoming less empty Myspace profile. Feel free to use my e-mail address to add me. Just don't be offended if a few months go by without me accepting you.