As I sat down this morning with my cup of chai and ignoring the several "friend" requests on FB...I wondered what the word friend means now. All these social networking sites have revolutionized the word "friend". So what defined a friend in the good old days..or lets say even three years ago. There are as many definitions of friends as there are clouds in the sky. But for now lets go to the internet our only trusted source of information today. According to the free web dictionary a simple definition of friend is someone you know well, like and trust. Know well- that would mean I have met this person at least more than once, spent at least more than 20 minutes talking to them. Like would mean I know how they react in certain social situations,behave, and maybe have common interests. Trust would mean that they have my best interest at heart and vice-versa.
Now lets define a friend in todays world of social networking sites like Facebook. Take a typical scenario on a friday night - You are invited to a party by a coworker, Melinda. You are not sure if you should go or not as you do not know any of her friends. You decide to make excuses of a dog wash night and then soon realize that your coworker probably remembers last weeks lunch conversation on how you are allergic to pets. So, you decide to wash your hair instead and head out the door with a bottle of wine in hand. As you stand at the door about to ring the door bell you have thoughts of turning around and walking away. But somehow your index finger reaches out and presses the doorbell faster than your feet can turn around. As you walk in the door you are introduced to multitudes of people. From the many short conversations of the night(longest lasting 3.5 minutes) people were like "Oh yeah, I have seen your posts on melinda's wall" You have an amazing sense of humor" and oh I loved the purple top you wore last week to your work party", "you look so much like your mom", and "how was your trip to Hawaii last month- loved your Pink bikini- btw did you buy it here in LA", "was that your boyfriend with you in Hawaii- he's so hot and cute". Wow, is this for real, it seems like all these people already knew you- your clothes, your vacations, your love interests maybe they even know what you had for breakfast(if you tweet)..Yikes! and you thought you were new to the world of FB. You had just recently started to figure your way around the profiles, how to write on another peoples walls instead of replying back on your own wall, the status updates and most of all the privacy settings. You didn't realize how much personal info you had displayed on FB that your friends friends seemed to know everything about you. As you stand flabbergasted, there's a flash and you realize you have been pulled into yet another group shot. During the shot one person is screaming don't you dare this put this on FB, while the photographer is screaming "Facebook" instead of Cheese. There were more pictures taken of you tonight than the day you graduated from college surrounded by "friends". Dazed and confused you try and remember all the names of people in your head on the drive back home. As you plop on the couch at the end of a long evening, you decide to log into FB and see for yourself what all is up for public display in the world of FB. As you log in you see 20 friend requests from the people you met at the party tonite. One of them even has a message inviting you to their 30th b'day party the next night. Isn't this a big event, don't they just want their close friends there? Well who cares what they want....What do you want? Do you add them or not? are they really your friends now? Do you really want them commenting on your every picture, do you ant them to hit the LIKe button everytime you post a status update or comment on how anorexic you look when they barely know you. But without much thought you decide to add them, as it would reflect badly on Melinda if you ignored them or gave them only partial access to things. Hence, starts the era of a new "friendship"....and you start rummaging thru your mind as to what you will wear to your "friends" birthday party the next night...wait whose party was it again? Oh well, who cares will know more when I get there, but for now let me write on Melinda's wall and see if we can go together to the party....
The word friend has become such a loose term now that we have forgotten the true meaning of friendships. Sometimes we end up caring more about what the virtual friends think and see of us. Twitter at least does not lead you into believing that your friends are following you, or you are following a friend. You are just a follower and you have access to everything from what they ate to what they are wearing to if today is the day they cut their toe nails. Do we really as a society care to know all these things about people and most importantly why? When you look at the number of people that join these sites daily- the answer is a resounding YES!
Social networking sites like Twitter, FB, myspace, friendster have definitely made the world a smaller place but its also made it more open for everyone to peak into our lives. Our parents always warned us of the social effects of telling people too much of what's going on in our lives. Before people would gossip to find out more information about people, but anymore so they don't have to. We actually invite them in our lives with a click of a button and give them an open access to our lives, whether it be people that we met thirty years ago(wait that would make me 7 back then...hmm),people that we met once, our chiropractor, yoga instructor, doctor, maybe even our bus driver. Where does this end? I do not think this social phenomenon will end anytime soon. We as a society always choose to go to the dark side of everything before we start retracing our steps and getting back to the world of normalcy.
Today we are defined by the number of friends we have on FB, how many people follow us on twitter, and how many people subscribe to our blog rather than the true friends that we can sit with and have a cup of chai on a friday afternoon. If only we could sit and sip chai with our true friends, maybe the meaning of friendship will shine thru the tea leaves...
Have a great day my friend!
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