What I learned from Facebook... so far

Quick, where can you find 5,000 friends and not one of them gives a toss about what's on your mind? a) When you're dead, b) when you're on facebook.

How do facebookers make friends? This is what I gather from my fledgling eff-book experience:

A pal in the real world - Accept.
Friend of a friend - Accept.
Enemy of an enemy - Accept.
Friend of an enemy - Ignore.
Enemy of a friend - Ignore.
None of the above - Suspicious. Ignore.

But what if the guy that wants to add you as a friend has 10 friends and 10 enemies on his list. How?

I've no idea. I'm learning, learning... :-)

Out of curiosity, I joined facebook in late February this year. I started with 0 friends. That was 7 weeks ago. Today this is what I have.

Friends: 9
Games played: 0
Pokes received: 0
Own pics uploaded: 0 (got no camera liao)
Comments made: 2-3 a day

Yes, that's nothing compared to the guy with 5,000-over friends that I came across the other day. Haha, I never had one-tenth of that my whole life!

But fascinating it is and so far, I'm most impressed by facebook's capacity to change the very definition of friendship. Apart from the couple of nice people I interact with personally, I'm starting to understand how social network friends are more like status symbols. Think of it as a scouts badge. Your mission, should you be the type, is to collect as many badges as possible. If you're a gamer you'll need them to build your mob. If you're a sopo (socio-political bum), you'll need them for presence. Badges from foreigners, celebrities and famous VIPs are worth ten times the ordinary ones. Just like in the real world, you are who you "know" and in some cases, who you don't.

If you are in it to socialize (what else do you do on a social networking site, duh) you have some thought evolution to do. For instance, there's only so much you can say with a status field limited to x characters so interpersonal bonding on facebook is... well... different. Being old school myself, just how people get far enough into relationships, get married and break up via facebook is till a mystery to me but... I guess there's nothing wrong with it if it floats everyone's boat.

Back to badges. If these tokens are the real power behind profiles, then a person with a single digit number of friends, like me, must be damn scary. I've seen that in my school days where the worst thing that can happen to you is to be seen playing with the lone weirdo sitting in the corner, even if he is really the most decent guy on the playground. Hmmm, maybe there is a correlation between facebook and real life after all. (Ha ha, before you think otherwise, I think having 9 friends is fantastic. For me its about quality, not quantity.)

What I like about facebook: Its lively and enriching, like walking into a vast coffee shop where people from all walks of life are chatting.

What I find scary: You dumb down your socializing decisions by letting others make them for you, as in the enemy of my enemy is my friend. You propagate the zeitgeist, sometimes mindlessly. Mundane things (I had a tooth filled today) become headline news (He had a tooth filled today!)

Overall, its... FUN!

I wonder if twitter is any different.