Everyday I seem to get a new friend request. Sometimes I have no idea who they are or where they are from. Sometimes, it's people that went to my high school whether I was in the school at the same time or not. I am always more inclined to accept those from my school even if I have never heard their name before. I think we need to start realizing games are games and we need to separate that from the internet. Trying to have as many friends as possible to seem cool may hurt you in the end. You never know who you could be accepting.
This picture is a good representation of everyone compiling together because they may have one mutual friend. Don't let this fool you; you may not know the same people, everyone might just be accepting and so it is a false mutual friend and you are left with a stranger--just like the person in the picture.
First of all, nice post and I agree that facebook is a game. It seems like everyone is always trying to see who has more facebook friends, almost as if it is a some level of social status. However, you are right, most people aren't actually friends with most people on their friends list, just aquaintances, or worse, not know them at all. I agree that networking is important, but I find it silly to accept friends with someone if you don't know them at all, it exposes your facebook to someone who in the end you may not want viewing things on your profile. Facebook, while very useful can be somewhat dangerous at the same time if you are just accepting friends to look cool by having more friends.
ReplyDeleteSammy,
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more with your perception of Facebook and Facebook friends. Like you, I too often get friend requests from people I don't personally know. In the past, I used to accept anyone, just for the sake of accepting. However, as I move forward in my academic and professional life, I've come to realize I don't want to share information with people I don't know. Some people feel the need to brag about the amount of Facebook friends they have, but life shouldn't be about your virtual connections and "friendships" it should be about your "real friendships." I've recently removed all the "friends" on Facebook I've accepted in the past, whom I don't know personally. My Facebook seems much more in tact and I am more comfortable sharing information with people I know (to a certain extent) than I would have had I chosen not to filter my friends or my personal information.
I think that the idea of having thousands of Facebook friends is actually pretty scary. After hearing plenty of horrific stories about Facebook and other social networking sites, I have recently been going through my list of friends and deleting the ones I actually don't know. I think it is so weird when people I see around campus that I barely know "friend" me. Why do they want to have access to my profile if I don't even know them? To me, this seems kind of stalkerish and just demonstrates how our generation has become so bad at communicating face-to-face. If someone wanted to be my friend, why wouldn't they just come up to me and start talking to me? It scares me how much information people can learn about me when they see my profile... they can figure out where I traveled, who I hang out with, what I value, and so much more. Especially with Facebook's new timeline, people can go even farther back and discover more about you. Social networking is becoming too stalkerish and scary!
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