In our world we have never been so connected. My example is that apparently I have over 120 “Friends”…
Last time I checked I actually only have a small group of friends, which have now been re-classified as “Close/immediate Friends”. I then have the general friends and then all of a sudden there are those people who do not qualify as acquaintances but also are not in the “General Friends” area.
I propose that we create a whole new scale on how we rank the people we know, what better way to do this then a 5 tiered system.
- Close/Immediate friends
- Friends who we meet with occasionally
- Online Friends (People we have known for a long time, but don’t fall in the above area but are closer then the below)
- “Ignored” Friends, the people once upon a time a friend who we ignore requests to add to our “friends list”
- Acquaintances, people that you do the polite smile and wave to in real life, but would never actually associate your selves on Facebook or similar.
This might sound complex but think about it, we are Gen Y this should be easy. Our parents would have a group of friends then move to another eventually loosing track of all previous groups. Occasionally bumping into them at random locations, this was almost like “Darwin’s evolution” theory. We would eliminate the people that were no longer relevant in life.
Society now as we know it means we will never officially “Loose” track of our friends, we will forever be reminded they are “now single” or that their favorite song now includes some crap. At the tender age I am at now (early 20’s) I feel like I have meet and be friended more people then I ever would have though possible.
We also then see the development of “Facestalking” where I will on the odd occasion track down one or more people from my life just in order to see what they are doing these days, if they still speak to particular people or not. While it is kind of sad… Yes even I admit I do it, and think it is sad. It seems to give you a warm fuzzy feeling to see the horrible wedding photos, or the person who sat behind you in Math’s who thought they would do everything and be the greatest who is now a checkout chick at the local supermarket.
This warm and fuzzy feeling is quite gratifying, however morbid and sad.
Well here is my first post, I hope if you liked, that you leave your comments 