JDDMichael Dot Com

Last night I got a little bored while I was setting up my Twitter feed to update to my Facebook page, and found myself poking around the friends lists of a few of my friends. What initially started as a quick bit of research to see if there were any names I recognized that I might want to reconnect with on a meaningful level quickly changed into an examination of what people use Facebook for and why (theoretically speaking).

What struck me rather quickly was the number of people on my rather short friends list that have several hundred “friends” of their own. I’ve met a lot of people in my time, and amongst those individuals have been some extremely outgoing social eclectics. In only the rarest of cases can I honestly say that any of these people actually had friends that counted in the hundreds, and even then I am using a fairly broad definition of “friend”.

That being said, I certainly don’t judge anyone for choosing to connect to hundreds of people regardless of the depth of familiarity they have with them. Clearly the very act of blogging ones thoughts out onto the Internet so that any number of complete strangers might read your words draws me into a very similar place as those who friend Facebook users with a tenuous connection to them.

What really struck me when I browsed the friends lists was the names on those lists that I recognized and would not have expected to see there. In a way, it would be like seeing distant friends and former flames on your parents friends list. Certainly I have no expectation that every person that has crossed my path on any meaningful level would want to reconnect (as I have been guilty of ignorant, selfish, irresponsible douchebaggery in my time), but it is still jarring to see connections made between people when the only common factor between them had been you, while those same people are not on your own friends list.

I suspect the reality of this situation is along the lines of what we saw happening with MySpace at its height when users were collecting “friends” by the thousands. Without a doubt, there are many of us that still reach for the level of perceived popularity that was kept from us when we were younger. On the Internet, everyone can be a star, and even the most unlikely candidates can play at being popular. Step one is to simply type in the name of every passing acquaintance you can think of.

An even more compelling explanation for friends lists that measure in the hundreds is that a lot of people have embraced the understanding that Facebook is an extremely powerful PR tool. Facebook does not inherently represent the truth of our lives. Rather, it represents the truth we choose to sell to the world. Ultimately, that is the greatest power of social media in general. Through it we are able to employ some of the most powerful personal marketing tools that currently exist. Welcome to the modern age where you are your product.

** It should be noted that I was very tempted at this point to include “and where everyone else consumes you” to the end of that… But my unseemly side decided that was way too easy a target for a gutter shot, so I abstained**

There are of course those of us that tend to keep our friends lists rather tight, restricting it to current friends and family. I don’t know that the inclination to market yourself is really any less in these circumstances, but it definitely seems that those of us with smaller friends lists seek comfort within familiarity. I am personally far more socially awkward and shy than I like to let on, and that is a huge component of my own short friends list.

The real interesting realities of the Facebook social scene is how these different approaches mix, and even more so in seeing how people from your own past choose to connect with a mutual acquaintance but not with you. Again, in respect to my own life I certainly can’t blame anyone for choosing not to contact me. While I have little doubt that there are those that I remember that likely don’t remember me, many of the missed connections are clearly willful based on the mutual friends that they did choose to connect with.

Once upon a time I’d have invested emotional energy into this realization, and would likely have sought out approval or reassurances that I really shouldn’t have needed, but in my old age I’ve managed to reign in a lot of that nonsense and just allow myself to indulge the intellectual curiosity that such things elicit. It is a fun way to pass the time at least, turning everything into a puzzle to pick apart.

I cannot offer any conclusions to my ponderings on Facebook and what it actually means, largely because I am still processing that puzzle heavily. But regardless of why each of us uses it, and with whom we choose to make connections, I do appreciate the importance that it plays in the evolution of our modern social experiment. It was not all that long ago that finding all these pieces and players of our social past would have been nearly impossible.

It is interesting, really, that while we move toward isolating ourselves socially in many ways, we simultaneously create much larger social circles. A contradiction, of course… But we are human, and contradictions are our specialty.