I logged into Facebook a few minutes ago and accidentally clicked on my own profile. Whoa, I have 321 friends?! How did that happen?!
I text/email with MAYBE 20 or so people regularly, and another 15 or so sporadically, so how in the world could I have 321 “friends” on F’book?
Scrutinizing my list, there are 4 categories:
- Friends from college - I was involved in things… I’m bound to friend girls from my floor freshman year, the kid I wrote up and later struck up a conversation with, that guy in all of my classes, and the fellow who is friends with 36 mutual friends (I really can’t remember him for the life of me, but oh well, we’re f’book friends!)
- Friends from elementary/middle/high school - Hey, I once had geometry with her, sure we can be friends. I think he and I “dated” in 8th grade, we should TOTES be friends. Oh and that awesome girl from 4th grade volleyball, yeah, we need to keep in touch.
- Work friends - interestingly the smallest group. Part of me likes this group the best, but I find myself screening what I say in status updates the most because these folks know my boss.
- Family - again, I have to friend these people; wouldn’t want to hurt Auntie’s feelings! But rest assured, most of these folks are on total lock down. They can’t see most of my photos or my wall posts. If I wouldn’t say it to my Aunt, I probably shouldn’t put it on the interwebz… it’s a nice idea, but then I’d hardly say anything at all.
Of course *I* think my categories are perfect. 321 friends makes perfect sense for me. If we do some averaging, that’s ~11 people a year. Perfectly reasonable… (I was a chatty 2 year old :P)
I checked out some of my friends - purely for research, obvs - Wait, how did Janet Doe end up with 1,057 friends?! She’s younger than me!!! She’s averaging ~40 people a year!
Maybe Janet went to big schools… maybe she works for a HUGE corporation… maybe she’s related to everyone in West Somewhere…but honestly, the simplest solution might be the truth: Janet Doe is an internet whore.
Or maybe I’m an internet prude. I don’t actually initiate many facebook connections. Maybe I’m too closed off.
There could be a middle ground: People don’t have to friend randoms to be in their mafia, or to help find a lost sheep on their pretend farm, or to be an internet sorority sister nor do they need to be passive about the friending process.
I’m not sure what the perfect formula is, if there’s a “magic” facebook friends number, but if your profile says that you are averaging more than 15 friends for every year of your life… yeah, I gotta wonder if you’re easy.
(Maybe if I facebooked while drunk, I’d feel differently… hmmmm)
