Become friends with the friends of your friends!

Dr. Madness is not a fan of the so called social sites (sometimes called Web 2.0, though many things are called Web 2.0 while few of them actually are, and nobody seems to have decided what Web 2.0 really is) - meaning ofcourse, sites that let you link with people who are linked with people you know. Yes, I am talking about sites like Hyves. If it's somehow business related, I can see a potential use: increase business.

But when it's not business related... hmm... Become friends with the friends of your friends? Yes, it is certainly always nice to have more friends. If these new friends happen to be friends of your friends, great, more fun at the pub. However, meeting the friends of your friends and becoming friends with the friends of said friends online sounds a bit weird to me.

Sure, I know lots of people through the internet, but, it is no use to me to become friends with their friends. If you know them only through the internet, what's the added value above any other person hanging around on the web? Again, for business I can see a reason: business. If I was that type of girl, I'd probably say to have more stuff to gossip about (e.g., that friend who was your friend before you became friends with his friend). I pondered putting an example quote here, but decided not to go there and protect my future children from non-existence. Yes, there are some crazy FemLez's (feminist lesbians) around with various nuts to crack and a dog named [u8]myballz.

Right! Back on topic. Okay, it might be useful and fun to become friends with the friends of your friends if you know and interact with them in real life. In this case however, these social networking sites still don't make sense. Whatever happened to traditional ways of becoming friends with the friends of your friends, like going to the parties of your friend and hooking up with his friends there? For the more daring out there (who might indeed be less socialable) you can always wait 'til they are passed out, tie them up, and play them a tape repeating "you really like me" for eight hours straight. Though that might be a bit extreme, research has proven time and again that unconscious people have less incentive to dislike you (assuming you are not the reason they are unconscious). There are almost endless ways and opportunities to become friends with the friends of your friends by meeting them in real life. If all else fails, you can always nick your friends phone, pretend you're one person in his contacts and call one of the others to tell them your real self is really great and you two should really get together for some fun - you should however be critical about who you call, not all numbers in the list are created equal: most likely the guy at New York Pizza is not at all interested in your friendship and all the more in which pizza you want.

The way these sites are increasing in popularity however, suggests that it won't be long before we will ban real life social interaction altogether, and instead turn into wifebeating primates jerking off to pictures of a young girl (or guy, incase you happen to be the rare non-FemLez female reader) that 45 year old skinny dude pretends to be.

Viva la digital revolution!

"Becoming friends with the friends of my friends is logically unnessecary. Considering the infinte multiverse, somewhere, somehow, I am not only friends with the friends of my friends, I am my friends, and inherently their friends, as well." ~ Oscar Wilde on Web 2.0