Writing over at Slate.com today, Reihan Salam breaks down a family of dilemmas that many of us are facing in this increasingly, “I need a cool profile” world:
Last week, I launched the Great Facebook Purge of 2007. In one fell swoop, I whittled down a list of 274 “friends” to a more manageable Γ’β¬Β¦ um, 258. Even weeding out this tiny amount of people was difficult and unpleasant. Almost every subtraction made me wince. While my intention had been to de-friend every hanger-on and casual acquaintance, I just couldn’t do it. All I could stomach is eliminating everyone I’ve literally never met in my life. I still have three “friends” I know only via e-mail, though given that we’re firmly in the Digital Age, I figure this is acceptable. [Link]
<
p>Anna wrote a bit about taking the plunge into Facebook a few weeks back and also mentioned that Sepia Mutiny now has its own group. Like everyone else, SM started with Friendster and then briefly flirted with the idea of that idiotic, EvErYoNe HeRe SpElLs LiKe ThIs, Myspace site. Now it seems Facebook is the place to be. For South Asian Americans, who still number only a few million strong in the United States, a profile of you is that much easier to dig out by anyone looking specifically for you, and therefore more relevant I would argue.
How do you decide whether it’s OK to friend someone?
After all, it’s always better to be the rejecter rather than the rejectee. I will now contradict myself: Friending strangers is permissible. If you are going to approach a stranger, don’t do it out of the blue. Never, ever send a random friend request without undergoing some preliminaries, such as trading a few wry observations. The beauty of this “Facebook foreplay,” to use an unfortunate analogy, is that you can always refuse to respond. [Link]
<
p>At this point I face a Hobbesian choice: either evolve or perish. After gathering just over 175 friends on Friendster, I woke up one recent morning to realize that I would have to start from scratch again, this time in a younger man/woman’s world. The pit that left in my stomach was unbearable. In this brave new world the men are funnier with their descriptions of themselves, and the women list themselves as Class of ’07…just beyond my considerable reach. Then there are all the customized “plugins.” I have to list all my favorite bands and tell people all the countries in the world I’ve been to, etc. It’s hard enough picking up chicks at a bar. Now I have to worry whether my world map plugin is sufficiently full (which is why I already counted Guatemala even though I’m not going for another two months π
<
p>The problem is it doesn’t just stop at Facebook. There is also a social network for book lovers, one for business folks, and even one for your portly cat. When you come home you have to check them all to see if you are still relevant. Sartre would be able to write a masterpiece about this were he still alive. Ask yourselves this simple question: If you don’t have a profile, do you really exist? If I have a profile does it mean I’m just another one of the baying sheep? If I don’t have a profile that sufficiently distinguishes me, how will people know that I’m not a sheep?
But please, don’t let any of this useless pontificating dissuade you from befriending Sepia Mutiny, or me. Even baying sheep need friends.
i deleted all my social networking accounts 2 weeks ago except for linkedin, which i keep for professional reasons. i started on friendster in june 2003, and at first it was novel, cool and convenient. but when the whole world is on these things, what’s the point? who wants to be a member of a club that everyone can join? granted, there’s big differences in personal situations. if you live in a small town in the middle of nowhere perhaps you’d like to know all the vegetarians in a 50 mile radius so you could have brown veggie potlucks. but for those in a big city the sea is already pretty big.
I’ve avoided LinkedIn like it was an arranged marriage! HA! I “retired” my friendster account a few weeks ago, after four long years. It felt like graduating from high school. π Despite my posting a “shout-out” and bulletin indicating that I was absconding to far-superior-Facebook and would no longer be active or checking in…a few of my friends did not notice and are still sending me important messages there. Sigh.
Facebook is amazing. I’m in way better touch with far-flung family members, I am going to a concert I would have missed were it not for iLike, I’ve replaced counting sheep with a certain trivia quiz (which is WAY more effective at putting me to sleep) and then there is Scrabulous…oh, that I had more time to play this game of the gods. π Seriously, even beyond all that, I’m learning so much just by surfing around. Aviyal relationships, activism via group (Jena Six et al), how slow-walking people should be punched in the head…it’s all ridiculously fascinating.
Facebook is great for getting in touch with your long lost friends. Yes it is hard at times to distinguish who’s a FB worthy friend & who’s an acquaintance. Weeding out the not so worthy ones is a hard task to follow through with, once they’ve made it to your Friends list. But the irony is that most friends spend so much time on FB, recording every moment of their lives on a digital camera, only to have them post it on FB & spend the entire evening commenting & returning friend’s comments on their posted pics. No one wants to get out & interact anymore. We are truly becoming social pariahs.
i, like anna, have officially graduated from friendster… with 400+ friends or whatever, tis now an old school way of ‘timepass’…
facebook has got me in touch with friends i lost touch with (real old friends) from almost 15+ years ago.. how they found me, i do not know..but it has been a blessing..
whether it be ‘drop kicking’ someone to sharing things you listen to, travel to, or read, it’s been a fun place, and the biggest time suck this side of the mississippi :)…
onwards and upwards facebook.. and heck, microsoft wants to buy 5% of facebook for $250 million, so hell, it’s working.
p.s. linked in is odd… i get these odd job requests.. weird.
p.s. the microsoft/facebook deal
Abhi, that sounds more like the creationist dilemma. π
I LOVE FACEBOOK. It’s basically my life. Nobody I know goes on Myspace anymore, because its to…dare I say..ghetto? Facebook has an easier interface, and this handy dandy “wall to wall” thing-a-ma-bob. yay =]
I think they need a social network for bad typers π
We don’t need no education We dont need no thought control No dark sarcasm in the classroom Teachers leave them kids alone Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone! All in all it’s just another brick in the wall. All in all you’re just another brick in the wall. -Pink Floyd
:). Sorry about playing the pedant. btw, good fob (sorry Runa) that I am, I never graduated from orkut. But I like shelfari.
i’m really old fashioned. i just go to bars.
facebook is definitely more fun and more versatile than friendster, but i’m amazed at how much time people spend on it. i swear, i think friends just make up groups for other friends to join.
Yeah, chemistry is important.
I passed on all of the social networking sites and now thinking about giving up on Skype. So what if I can talk to my friends in Europe or cousins in India?
Might just get an iPhone to insure my emails are less lengthy and to compartmentalize all electronic social communication to one device. Then the computer would just be for work.
I swore I wasn’t going to join Facebook. I retired Friendster a few years ago. I got a Myspace page b/c of the free musical shows I got invited too. But I love Facebook. I have found old friends/classmates!
I think you might have meant Hebbian not Hobson?? Doesn’t Hobson mean a simple choice between two things? In that case yes. But then again, if your emphasis is on evolve or pErish …. then it would be Hebbian!! Or “Hobbesian” as Calvin would say. Facebook is awesome. Although this Big Brother aspect is a little unnerving, as well as this new “poke” application. Neither of which should be used as “Facebook Foreplay.”
Oh no you didn’t π ! et tu ,Sakshi?
There has been speculation of class-distinction playing a role in the Facebook-Myspace world…
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/greenslade/2007/06/facebook_or_myspace_theyre_a_c.html
Is the key word is ‘old’ π
Have a profile on facebook and Linkedin. Dont know what purpose it serves. log into both about once a fortnight. As for finding long lost friends – I dont want to find them π They are lost for a reason.
Like many others, facebook started off as a keeping in touch with old buddies. And it is pretty handy when organizing events and lark. And remembering birthdays, well good for that. The problem I found was when people requested to be friends and all your friends are friends with them and your thinking I should know this person, right? And you donΓ’β¬β’t!! crazy, Γ’β¬ΕIΓ’β¬β’m a friend of a friend of a colleague whom I met once 12 years agoΓ’β¬Β. Who knows you could end up marrying them!
Its all fun in the end of the day, just donΓ’β¬β’t forget to be safe and to leave the house and exercise a little bit!!
What is to prevent Facebook from getting ghetto like Myspace is now? Why are the artists still only on Myspace?
If I am ‘ poked ‘ should I take it as an expression of sexual interest in me by the poker? Isn’t that how poking is different than befriending someone? Just asking because I am new. I live by a celibate rule – I don’t ask anyone to be my friend. Keeps the pressure off. Besides I like to be asked like Letterman.
What is to prevent Facebook from getting ghetto like Myspace is now? Why are the artists still only on Myspace?
nothing. there will be a facebook ii, a facebook iii, and so on. social networking sites are like gay bars. they get “popular” with straight women, then straight guys come, and all the gays disappear to another bar which then becomes fashionable and the cycle repeats.
tRu StOrY.
b4 my iDeNtItY bEcAmE kNoWn 2 INTERPOL, I haD a MYSPACE paGe. SeeInG tHat INTERpol was HoT on my tAIL, i RaN out of my cAB and into an inTerneTs CaFe in CAIRO and ChAnGeD my LoCation 2 MONGOLIA. i nxt loGGed-in in TEL AVIV only 2 finD Out my page had bEEn deleted by myspaCe. yOu sEE, i aM aN INTERNATIONAL prosTheTic Arms DeaLER. sOMe RuN with tHeiR LeGS, I run with Arms. onLy ReceNTLy diD it oCCur 2 ME that gIVEn my ClienTΓΖΓΒ¨le’s uNiQuE NeeDs, i dId not need an oNLiNe prEsEnce.
No need my friend, bars are redundant, Facebook has a Happy Hour functionality where you can buy a potential mate a drink without fear of getting it thrown in your face. But in all fairness, there is a possibility someone might throw a sheep at you. cringe
BEST PROFILE YOU’LL EVER GIVE YOURSELF…
The FAKE Shaadi.com profile!
Only to be created if your mate happens to be surfing through the site and mocking her cousin’s profile and then finds that her Dad has written one up for her…it’s the perfect way to get her to calm the fuck down while mocking some of the less-than-palatable aspects of this truly original site (Do I want someone with a special handicap or should I just tick that I abhor all disabilities? Values – moderate or very liberal?…Features – attractive or just plain average?…) etc.
Bonus = no fake friends.
ONLY fake husbands…
Plus you get a special birthday e-card, the joy of making up a sexy profile name (fatandblack for moi, but there are so many to choose from), and all those special little emails which make the day skip happily along…
‘Hello. I am wanting to get marriage. Have three month work visa. must be non smoking, vegetarian. Good hygiene and morality essential.’
Now WHO couldn’t love that π
I find facebook much more cleaner than myspace, or at least it was before they started adding silly applications to it.
I do the ‘friend purge’ thing every few months myself. Extremely cathartic π
I try to go through and delete people once everyone couple of months .. The worst is when you delete someone and they notice and call you out on it.. I guess the decision to cut ties wasn’t mutual. Solution: add them to limited profile so you can “stay in touch” but they have no more information than anyone that is random on facebook
I do wish there was more control over what I get to see. I REALLY don’t want to know about people’s love lives on my news feed, but it’s there.
I, too, prefer the Facebook to MySpace, mostly because the interface is cleaner but also because I liked when it was an elitist network π I’m just kidding, but the great thing about a limited network is that it’s easier to search for people. I feel like the search functions in MySpace and Friendster are completely unwieldy. I was an ardent anti-(social networking websites) person until I realized that if I actually want to keep in touch with friends/acquaintances/family/colleagues who pretty much fail to function in any format other than Facebook.
Re: de-friending people, I find this really hard to do. My friends and I always joke about your “real friends” versus “facebook friends.” It can be so embarrassing when you de-friend someone and they call you out. And, given that I use the facebook like a Rolodex, there’s really no need to be hyper-discriminatory unless I really dislike someone or sincerely have no idea of who they are, you know? The things I purge on a VERY regular basis are my group memberships.
All these new applications are frustrating, though (with the exception of the travelmaps — of which there have to be 5 different application options, Scrabulous, and the Cal Football Fan function, haha). They make loading soooo frustrating. I’m antiquated — if I want to know about events I sign up for the email list π
Oh, and as far as the profile. I used to have this awesomely long profile (when I first started and thought you were actually supposed to answer the profile questions) and realized that all of that is just a bunch of crap. My friends already know what I’m interested in, and people who don’t know me don’t need to know anything beyond what’s on there.
Hey! Nobody told me that when I created my Orkut profile! Is that why all the desis I know on Orkut are DBDs and no ABD whom I know in real life is on Orkut?
By the way, we need some short abbreviation for “recently arrived DBD” and “not-so-recently arrived DBD”. Before “FOB” was deprecated for rudeness, it served well to convey the sense of “recently arrived”, but even at that time there was nothing for “ex-FOB”. I once flirted with “stale-off-boat” for two seconds before realizing that regrettably it abbreviates to “SOB”. π
razib wrote:
LOL
Manju (re comment #11):
Me too! And I don’t care (cf. #18 by melbourne desi) wthk the key word is π
I remember reading a pretty funny article about LTOBs (Long Time Off the Boats) in Little India a few years ago but can’t seem to find it online.
FYI – Camille has almost 1000 friends on her facebook, so she knows what she’s talking about π
oh god. thats the story of my life..
Brazil and India have really taken to orkut. Over 50% of orkut’s members are from Brazil, and 15% from India. 18% are from the US (mostly DBDs, my guess). Also, over 60% of the members are younger than 25. That doesn’t mean its more exciting: I’ve found the geekiest groups there, such as ones on Markov models, or on graph algorithms.
I opened an account on facebook, but it was 2 days before I lost interest in social networks. I still haven’t figured out a use for them. I don’t know if its just a phase the Web is going through, or really the future of the internet (and that is a million dollar question, literally).
Ah, but the problem is that I don’t know which of the six kajillion “Abhis” on Facebook is you.
Also that if I friend the SM, I’ll have blown my “pseudonymous” cover.
Hmmm.
Perhaps I should open a separate Facebook account just for the mutiny.
That wouldn’t be obsessive or anything, would it?
Two things: 1. Microsoft mulling over investment in Facebook 2. It may put Facebook’s value to $10 Billion
Can you say BUBBLE ?? Its like the late nineties all over again. Microsoft wants its AOL too.
(Remember Ted Turner’s excited words when Time Warner acquired AOL)
cough They do, it’s called Myspace!
I get the impression Orkut is more of an abroad thing? I actually had never heard about it until I talked to my (DBD) cousin when I went to her wedding last year. Talk about being out of the loop!
To get unnecessarily totally serious on a trivial matter…
I blame the scourge of these social networks on the cult of personality. In the absence of true character or demonstrable character on a daily basis (life isn’t the movies where you are forced to make tough choices every day that demonstrate your character), people resort to acquiring a personality. All this takes is some money and effort/time. Or wearing a stupid hat. Then people climb on to their social perches to express themselves and show how unique they are because they listen to The Smiths and Leonard Cohen and Mos Def and Ravi Shankar. And they are totally into cow tipping too and ofcourse the countries they have visited.
It’s like trying to summarize every eccentric nugget into one pithy sentence and showing others how unique they are but deep down hoping that they will share some of that uniqueness with someone else and be unique together because “they totally get it”.
I am just like you. There is nothing special about me.
Thank God I can still meet random people at bars and on elevators.
p.s. I have a facebook too.
Well it had to happen sooner or later!
Orkut is a Big thing in india & ‘DBDs’here. Being a google progeny, Its got a clean interface, simple functions. I’ve got 120+ real friends there & some others whom i found to be interesting like a couple of Caucasian girls who are fond of bollywood.
I joined Facebook three years ago to reconnect with old classmates. The novelty of it wore off when I began to feel like I was spying on people. Nowadays, the interface is so frustrating with the pseudo-myspace applications. Plus they opened it up to everyone, so I’m getting friend requests from people much younger than I from my Church whose profiles leave me flabbergasted – I’d rather not know what they’re up to.
Also, technology can suck your communication skills and leave you soul-less.
Delirium tremens, I couldn’t agree more. Can I be your Friend(ster)? Er…
FB’s interface seems “clean” only because MS is downright vomit.
I got me a page too, but other than the joy of finding an old friend, the experience was pretty dull. But then, I am a dull guy. I hear others have created quite a social scene for themselves.
After avoiding it like the plague, I finally signed up for a Facebook account today to view pictures from a friend’s wedding. Sweet nut sampler! Why didn’t anyone tell me that 95 people from my GMail list of contacts alone are active on Facebook, including friends of my parents (and I haven’t gone through Yahoo and Outlook yet)? Like ANNA, I have to conclude that FB is far superior, although I cannot cancel my Friendster and MyWasteOfSpace accounts for reasons she mentions.
As for whom to friend, I don’t accept anyone unless known IRL or from much virtual time spent together.
Sigh. It looks like I should create a page as Ennis …
So the sepia mutiny facebook page has about 450 members. Yet I was the 1st person to out myself and I think only half dozen people have let people know what name they use here to post.
yeah orkut is a big thing in india…i’m on orkut, and it serves pretty much as a “telegram” service to my cousins in india (well the scrapbook does anyway). i think i’m an orkut addict!!!
Clueless, you are brave. Ennis, I vote for an “Ennis-profile.” Sunzari, I hear ya!