Social Piranhas

I vividly recall my first experience with Facebook. It went something like this:

Saj: I can't believe there is a Facebook group about me.

Me: What's Facebook?

Saj: Like Friendster, seems cooler.

Me: And what the heck is a group?

Saj: Just a random thing, like you can invite people who like the same thing or support a cause or whatever.

Me: And there is a group supporting you?

Saj: There is a group which was made to get me to shave off my beard! If it reaches 50 people I have to shave it all off!

Me: Hahahahaha!

(10 Minutes later)

Saj: YOU JOINED THE GROUP?!?!




The above conversation was carried out over the ever-so-useful MSN Messenger, and seemed to highlight the few things which have made Facebook (and other social networking) sites so popular in this day and age.

1. Coolness
"Facebook is cooler than Friendster" is the phrase heard more often than not when you ask about the two rival sites. MySpace is perhaps the other party, though from my limited experience among friends and online gaming buddies, the popularity of Tom's vehicle is limited to North America. Anyone remember when people thought Friendster was cooler than ICQ?

2. Signing up is easy!
How many times have we seen this very line plastered on just about every site which requires any sort of login procedure at all? But it's true, even my mother has a Facebook account, though she complains incessantly about her aged primary school friends who seem to suffer from Lack-of-Facebook-itis.

3. Diversity and Versatility
Via Facebook and other social networking sites, it seems one can do just about anything. I can share and read movie reviews done by peers, I can play Pacman and listen to Breaking Benjamin, I can view and distort photos, engage in multiplayer word puzzles, declare my undying love for a particular movie starlet, pledge support for a cause, find and locate once-lost friends and associates, purchase any number of items, share works of art... the list is endless. I got someone to go nearly bald with a mouseclick.

But what has this new-fangled Social Media done to us?

A while back, I received a call from a friend of mine, she sounded distressed, and because I lived less than five minutes from her house, my chivalry kicked in and I met with her in the dark of the night to talk her through her problem.

What was it?

She was upset that someone she once thought of as her best friend had grown distant, that now this other girl seemed to have devalued their friendship. While I thought it might have to do with a new love interest, one thing in particular that she said echoed in my mind.

"Nowadays we are only friends according to Friendster..."

That got me thinking. A long time ago, when Windows 95 seemed like the most technologically advanced thing since Robocop, I had a clear idea about what a "friend" was. What is a "friend" now?


Do I really have over 300 friends? Has social media degraded the value of friendship, the sanctity of interpersonal relationships? In my home, my brother and I are often separated only by a few metres and a single wall. Yet we communicate mostly via the internet. And it's not like he's a deaf mute.

One of the various "celebrity bloggers" that so many seem to worship commented sometime last year that they are very happy with their "social life", and that they have ten thousand friends, as proven by the number of contacts on their commercialised and rather witless attempts at online commentary.

Friends.

Net Gains

I can still remember the sound of the 14.4 dial-up, back when a poorly-timed phone-call could spell disaster for an agonisingly incomplete and thoroughly illegal intellectual property infringement via our friends at Napster. Those were the days. The times of ICQ and mIRC, where the term "you tube" might only refer to an article of female clothing and "google" was a typo for swimming apparel. Nowadays people think Alta Vista is Microsoft's next big flop.

I myself have had many thoroughly memorable experiences with this "new media" as some term it. Some good, and some bad. One such experience got me an "A" in secondary school as I recounted it to a faceless invigilator who was smitten by my romantic wiles, but that is another tale for another time.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what to write on this week; I'm facing some sort of mental blank, possibly brought upon by seven-hour-long MMORPG sessions and doing my best ninja impersonation to steer clear of certain people. The Internet does that to you, I guess. It gives you a second life, some say (sometimes literally). I would take another look at that statement, actually. To many, the internet doesn't offer a second life as much as it seems to become a person's life. To many, the term "real life" isn't so different from the persona or avatar or image or profile or character or toon or username or callsign or moniker that he or she (and even that can be a mystery unsolved) goes by on any given game, forum, chatroom, messageboard, newsgroup or network.

A few weeks ago someone I know but had never spoken to beyond "Hey, nice Man Utd jersey, is it an imitation?" came up to me and introduced me to someone else (who I actually had spoken to before), bringing her attention to some webcomics I had come up with over the past year or so. For a fleeting moment, I envisioned myself as the next A-list celebrity, though I have since not seen them or the expected horde of adoring fans clamoring for my autograph.

What is the internet? An outlet for personal opinion? A tool for fame and infamy? A facilitator for social networking? A matchmaker? A new, interactive form of entertainment? An addiction? An answer to boredom? A cause for academic mediocrity? A realm of smut and smugness? A source of information and illumination?

Perhaps it is all these.

Science-Fiction?

So this isn't exactly "Internet Communication", but someone else's blog had the phrase "the machines are learning" or something, which got me thinking as well. Enjoy.