A Long Time Ago, We Used to be Friends

I’m on Facebook but use it for hardly anything useful. I generally spend my time reading other people’s status updates, trying to come up with smartass comments for photos, and sometimes setting up social gatherings. On an average day I probably spend 5 minutes on Facebook.

Almost every one of my Facebook Friends has between 100 and 300 other Friends - it’s rare I see anyone with less than 100. It’s easy to amass Facebook Friends, since you end up with requests from people you went to high school with, or you worked with, or you once sat next to on a bus five years ago. I’ve made a mandate of keeping my list to under 100, though, because I’m a stone cold jerk.

You see, I don’t like having Facebook Friends that I haven’t talked to in a decade and who, until the advent of Facebook, I really didn’t care about. I’ll admit when I first signed up for Facebook, I went on a crusade to add all the hot girls from high school, just to see if they were still hot. But since then I’ve deleted all of them, and probably delete a good eight or ten people every six months. This is probably not proper Facebook Friendship etiquette, but seriously, I don’t want these near-strangers peeping in on my life, however unexciting it is, and I don’t really wonder what they’re up to (looking up ‘hotties’ is purely superficial). Sometimes I’m curious, sure, but I do equate Facebook Friendship with at least a tiny shred of real friendship. I think I’ve got a small but good bunch of friends, and most of the people on my Friend List are ones that I genuinely like, and like hanging out with, ‘in real life’.