The Long Walk to Nowhere

I read this article “How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook” by Cory Doctorow on Yahoo! News yesterday and it got me thinking…

Mr. Doctorow presents an interesting study on the social aspects of the Internet and the various “walled gardens” that keep popping up (Facebook, SixDegrees, Friendster, MySpace, etc…) providing pretty solid arguments as to why these social networks are really nothing more than ways for big businesses to squeeze more money out of the public (be it through membership fees or the less direct – however highly trafficable – pushed advertisement) as well as detriments to the open Internet that everyone should be pushing for. He also demonstrates the dangers that these social networking services present which was what got me to thinking…

The conclusion that I came to is that social ability is a set of skills. Unfortunately, for most in today’s society, the importance of teaching these skills has been minimized. Everybody is apprised of the importance in acquiring academic aptitude; however the need for social savvy seems to have been mitigated to skills one either acquires naturally else is condemned to trudge throughout life in absence of.

How I came to this conclusion might not be very obvious to many – or perhaps it’s blatantly obvious to most but just not evident to me. You see a while back, prior to flying out to California, I was checking out my MySpace page when Todd started asking me who my “friends” were. I have a whopping total of 34 “friends” on MySpace and, interestingly enough, I was only actually able to identify 10 of them as people that I would even consider “known” outside of MySpace and fewer still that I would consider friends. Todd was amused by this. He has 31 MySpace “friends” and, except for Tom (the default sysop “friend” that everyone gets by default) and Tool (the band), the remainder actually are Todd’s friends.

He then asked me why I would want to have people I don’t even know as “friends” on MySpace and I basically told him that I didn’t care. The way I figure it is that, if somebody stumbles onto my MySpace page and decides they wanted to be my friend, who am I to say “no”? Sure, you need to at least attempt to verify that the new request is coming from an actual person (this is usually easily accomplished by checking out their page) and you’re going to get some people that may become nuisances in the future; however there’s nothing stopping you from removing them from your “friends” if this happens. I’ve noticed quite a few people on MySpace with literally thousands of friends which leads me to believe that I’m not the only one that thinks this way…

But I’m starting to stray from my original point… You see Todd is somebody that understands what is necessary for a person to be socially adept. He’s learned the importance of this well enough to not even have to think about it – it’s become second nature. I, on the other hand, have somehow missed out on this education. The whole issue of us comparing our “friends” lists on MySpace was just one more of many instances where my lack of ability in the social arts has become painfully obvious. And it’s not just that he has somewhere on the order of ten times more actual friends than I have on MySpace; it’s more about my having friends that I don’t even know seems comical to him. After all, it is pretty silly…

So what am I getting at here? I don’t really know… I guess it has to do with the realization I recently came to that “what” you have in this life is far less important than “who” you have. When the shit hits the fan, you can always count on your friends – assuming, of course, that they are true friends. And don’t get me wrong here – I am extremely thankful for the few friends that I do have; I’m just wondering why, when I am in a situation that separates me from my friends for any length of time (and it seems to be happening quite often…), I seem to be completely incapable of making new friends. Is it a learning disability?

Oh well … fuck it. It’s not like I’m going to suddenly come to any realization that’s going to change anything. Besides, the grass is always greener … right? I really need to stop over analyzing everything. Bottom line here is that shit happens because shit happens. Now where was I going with this post…? Oh yeah, nowhere…

bis später,

Coriolis