Destination Unknown

Before anything, I’m
going out of my limb and am admitting that I’m not the most sociable guy you’d
ever encounter. Some would say I am quite an outcast; and I don’t disagree,
though others would say I’m quite outgoing. I guess it really depends on the
people I’m with, but I’m digressing.

The point is, I’m not
so sociable as to have a comprehensive list of friends for every community that
I join; doubly so if it’s an Internet community. Yes, I have a relative
overabundance of “friends” in my friendster, but on other sites like myspace
and hi5, I’m almost isolated. And, this is not to knock on anyone, but I get
annoyed whenever I receive emails from my friends inviting me to join Multiply,
Tagged, Berkster, and other such communities. I’m not saying these sites are
intrinsically evil - the kinds of stuff your grandma tells about kids today –
as it is certainly cool to join one, maybe two; sometimes I just
think a lot of people are missing the point that these are just that:
sites. Just because you’re a member to
a lot of them, just because you add a lot of individuals on your list, and just
because you have the most stylish Multiply page, it doesn’t follow that you’re
a terrific friend.

I think that, lost in
the mire of network communities, is a facet of the fundamental understanding of
friendship. The very definition of it is actually a very popular subject even,
in fact, among great women and men - including myself, though I have yet to
rise to stardom - ranging from Carole King to Yogananda. To espouse about the
true meaning of friendship, this would have become a very long article; so for
the sake of practicality, I am instead stating just a few key points.

A friend isn’t someone
you use merely to pad a list conceived as a barometer to your popularity. You
would add your friend if you do find him/her in Friendster, but it won’t matter
if you don’t because you’ll look for him/her outside e-message exchanges
anyway. Friendship isn’t about quantity, but the quality. There is nothing like
having someone to dance with you on a sunny day and to help you on a rainy day.

There is no sense in trivializing the qualities of friendship by some inane
bulletin boards, testimonials, Internet profiles, youtube videos, MTV’s, mp3’s,
and photogenic pictures. And it’s even more absurd to believe that friendship
is sustained by keeping with the fads – no friend worth his/her cent is going
to desert you just because you refused his/her Multiply invitation. In fact,
all these fancy profiles are just the impression you may give to acquaintances or
even strangers – the internet kind becoming increasingly creepier at an alarming
rate – and have nothing to do with how you sustain any kind of relationships. Developing a friendship is based on how you be with someone;
and if you suck at “being” with a person on friendster, it’s not going to mollify
magically if you be with him/her on myspace.

And with all that out
of the way, I’m going to say it: I’m not joining any more Internet communities.
I’m permanently hanging a basilisk skin to all the other social networking
sites. So if anyone suspects that I’m a sourpuss for not jumping on the
bandwagon and accepting your invitation to Tagged, well, you couldn’t be more
wrong. I just happen to have better things to do.

More importantly: I’m
still your friend.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.