An Opinion?

I love social networking! I am the person who always signs up to go to conferences and likes to go to business and social events to meet all types of people and talk about all sorts of things. Although my partying days seem to be over (I go out to bars once every 2 months), I love to have my friends over and bake for them. The truth is that even though I am an old fart (yes, at 25), I really do think that meeting people and networking is awesome, simply awesome. Nothing beats a person-to-person encounter, a beer or a cup of coffee with an old friend, or the excitement of meeting that group of people during that conference who happens to be obsessed with X, just like you. The world of social networking can be exhausting, but very rewarding. Plus, who doesn't love going over all of ones' cell phone contacts and asking oneself, “who is Jerry?” “Which Jenn is this?” Ah, that, my friends, is social networking at its best.

But wait a minute, I am supposed to be writing about online social networking, in my opinion, one of the driest topics out there. I don't really partake of it (once again, I am too old—I stick to pen and paper—ehem, ok, email) so I don't really have an opinion (though you will think I do). My question is (I am truly trying to form an opinion here), would you eva osk someone, “scuse me, haw many peepo ar in yur soutial n'twok?” (weird spelling intended to portray an English accent)? Ow, but of course you shall ask such a question! There ar bout forhundred seventyone peepo in my soutial n'twok, how bout yours? What an interesting exchange this would be. Well, apparently in the world of online social networking it is quite ok, even encouraged to boast about how many “friends” one has. A good friend of mine actually does have 471 “friends” on an online social network program people call “My Space.” How many of these people does she know personally? Maybe 35. How many are her true friends? Probably 10.

You know, it used to take some effort to make friends back in the day. I remember when I was a little girl my parents and I would spend our weekends in the club and I would always run around asking girls who seemed my age if they wanted to be my friend. While this does not sound difficult—after all asking someone a question is a much easier way of making friends than writing profiles and posting pictures of yourself on online sites—making friends in such a way seemed more authentic: you could always say “gotta go” after a few minutes into playtime when you realized that girl was really very annoying. Still, you could only make at most 5 friends a day like that. Online it seems that you can make 7000 friends in one day. All you have to do is be on American Idol and have some topless pictures floating around.

As you can probably imagine, I have a strange relationship with online social networks. In fact, I don't have much a of a relationship at all. That's not true. I do have an account in facebook. My profile has no information but my name and I have 3 friends. Yes, 3. The reason I have this account is because my friend X wanted to look at Y's profile (sound familiar?) and she happened to be at my place and had forgotten her password. OMG, you should have seen the look in her face when I told her I didnt have a profile: shear awe, fear, and disgust. Well now I have an account and all I ever do is poke a friend. On the other hand, I have been to the My Space site twice. I can feel the waves of change...

Nah, online social networking sites really are not my cup of tea. I like my tea with milk, sugar, and a friend (note: computer does not equal friend). I am the unchageable, unonlinesocialnetworker, unopinionized socialnetwoker.

- Nevenka