I Am Not Tom's Friend
October 9, 2008 4:04 PM   Subscribe

Will You Be My Friend [Flash]
posted by MiltonRandKalman (12 comments total)
 
A little context would have been nice. I got bored with the washed out monochome. I read "the idea" and that told me about as much as this post. I clicked on the "the people" watched two clips and realized why people would rather be friends with people online and not in real life.

For some reason I thought of Kevin Smith. He could have made this interesting, but this is already a tired idea. Maybe tell me why I want to go there, and why it's a cool idea?
posted by cjorgensen at 4:27 PM on October 9, 2008


Is your name John McCain?
posted by ...possums at 4:43 PM on October 9, 2008


I'll be your friend, Milton.
posted by joelf at 4:44 PM on October 9, 2008


No, but I'd like a motion sickness pill after trying to read text on a jerky video background.
posted by DU at 4:53 PM on October 9, 2008 [1 favorite]


Uh...thanks Joelf. Now if anyone asks if I have any friends I can say, "Yeah...uh..I have a friend...he's in Canada. We met at camp over the summer. Yeah..he's totally gonna visit me next month."

News of my progress will make mother happy again.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 5:03 PM on October 9, 2008


No.
posted by spiderwire at 5:12 PM on October 9, 2008


Social networking is different things to different people. Personally, I don't add anyone I don't know. But that's just me. I'm not the world's most sociable butterfly, I keep it tight. But I know a few people with friend lists that exceed one thousand. Do they know all of those people? Probably not. Does it matter? probably not. That's how they choose to do things.
I really don't see social networking as some revolutionary construct that has forever changed the face of human interaction, as was the impression I got from this site's MO. Sure it has made contact with people I haven't seen for twenty years possible, and I now know what books they're currently reading and can browse the photos of how drunk they were on the weekend; but beyond that it is really just a glorified email application on which lots of people voluntarily make themselves available to be contacted by others so they can pimp eachother's zombies and so forth. It hasn't really redefined the concept of friendship. You might add someone you've never met just because they asked you to, but does that mean you are now 'friends'? No. Well, not just yet anyway. Does doing so redefine the meaning and concept of friendship? No.
posted by nudar at 5:13 PM on October 9, 2008


... Wow, I ... I really sincerely apologize for that. I think social networking sites and 404 emails have given me a preconditioned response to offers of friendship extended over the Internet.

That and the time Craig Newmark robbed my house.
posted by spiderwire at 5:18 PM on October 9, 2008


I guess I just don't understand what they're going for. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if someone wants me to look at or otherwise interact with this site, someone ought to explain it. This could be either the poster of the FPP or someone on the website, but seeing as neither one really does that, I'm going to go ahead and call this a shitty post.
posted by Caduceus at 5:34 PM on October 9, 2008


Will you be my fiend?
posted by Mblue at 6:02 PM on October 9, 2008


When I tried social networking, namely Myspace, it was on a lark. I thought it was silly. I made a goofy page, found my friends that were already on the site, and we proceeded to make fun of the whole dumb thing. I mean, you can't be "friends" with some random goober from Teh Intarnets. A collection of little pictures isn't "friends."

But the weirdest thing happened. I wrote a blog that people I had never met before thought was amusing. I started groups that people thought were useful and funny. Interesting people started corresponding with me - not just spambots, camgirls, and gentlemen sending me pictures of their wangs - people who actually wanted to talk to me. They became more than little pictures and carefully worded blurbs. I actually made FRIENDS. Really good friends that I never would have met otherwise. Friends that ended up being amazing IRL.

Now, some of those friendships were initially formed by making fun of the very platform that allowed them to happen, but the point is that if you put forth the right kind of effort, you can actually meet real live interesting people via social networking sites, if you make it more than a game of who can collect the most cards.

I think that there are interesting things to be said about social networking. There is something to be explored in the way that people present themselves on the internet - what those representations and the way they form connections say about who they really are and what they value. In a "profile" a person is trying to put forth an appealing little self-portrait - it is odd that my little picture on the internet is friends with your little picture on the internet. How much of "me" is really in my profile, how much of "you" in yours? But if it's being talked about here I'm not seeing it.
posted by louche mustachio at 6:05 PM on October 9, 2008 [2 favorites]


No, gray, jittery website, I will not be your friend.
Because you are boring.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:14 AM on October 10, 2008 [1 favorite]


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