If I were shopping for friends, I wouldn’t choose someone like me. I don’t have a killer mojito recipe, a vacation home in Maui, or a cache of uproarious travel stories to share over dinner. I’m bad with birthdays. I don’t even play tennis.
But suddenly everyone wants to be my pal.
I recently created an account on Facebook, the social networking site for folks too old for MySpace and too lazy for LinkedIn. No sooner had I filled out a profile than I started getting “friend requests” from people I know. And people I barely know. And people I don’t know and don’t want to know.
“Joe Random has added you as a friend,” the alert reads. You click one button to “confirm” the friendship, another to “ignore.”
I find myself wishing there was another button: “Explain.” Perhaps I’m stuck on semantics, but the use of the word “friend” to describe these tenuous, meaningless digi-relationships has me confused. Who are these Facebook amigo-seekers and what exactly do they want from me?
