Be My Friend

There has been a recent surge of sites that people can join to either meet people or to get reaquainted with old friends. Every now and then I will get an email from an old acquaintance who had my email, but never used it for anything but forwarding jokes/Chicken Soup for the Soul stories/and an occasional 'how you doin', asking me to join a site like Hi5, Friendster, Myspace or someother cyberspace rolodex. I joined a couple: Friendster and Myspace, because at first it seemed interesting, but now is just a pain. For instance, on my one cyber rolodex, it started out as a way to keep in touch with certain people, but I've realized is just a popularity contest for other people. I have friends of friends, and neighbos of friends asking me add them to my list. I don't even know these people!!! And for some reason they want me on their list.

I added some of them in the past thinking they would become an asset or some sort of networking contact, but nope, once I added them, nothing became of it. I never heard from any of them again.

I have some friends who have like thousands of people on their friend's list. They just keep adding people that see their profiles on-line and ask to be part of their collection of "friends". One of the sites even has a profile rating, based on your picture, your status and the amount of person's who check out your profile. How damaging could this be to some high school adolescent going thru the pubertal changes or a high school misfit who wants to meet friends outside their already terrible social life. They come to a place that offers some anomininity, only to be rejected based on their profile/pic/bio.

One of my friends was cyberstalked by a person on her list. Nevermind that she posted pictures of herself in a bikini. I wondered why she would do something like that, but her profile became one of those highly rated and she just kept adding people for the sake of adding them. She was soon getting proposals from guys that had picture perfect profiles that claimed these coiffed, buffed, fluffed and puffed men were models. My thoughts were, if they looked like that, they certainly wouldn't need a site to sell themselves. They would just have to walk into any people crowded venue and begin the pick-up lines.

I'm wondering how long the fad of friendship sites is going to last. And who takes the time to maintain these sites. For now, my rolodex has remained pretty dormant. I must not have an interesting enough profile to buzz others my way. But then again, I've got my real tangible friends, who I can just reach out and touch anytime I want to.

P.S. And then there is that darn Classmates.com