Internet Friends
Comrades! Fellow netizens! Co-dwellers of this series of tubes we call The Internet! Pause in your frenzied clickery and lend me a moment of your time. We are, collectively, faced with an awesome responsibility; A chance to intervene and fundamentally alter our future in a subtle but vital way. We must choose:
A New Word.
But not just any old word, oh no. The word we choose will not only be used by an entire generation to describe their every interaction, but will also save a dear old existing word which at present is being abused most horribly. Now, this poor, tormented word knew the risks when it signed up. It bravely stepped in to fill a void which we had created; a space where a word was needed but where we had none to offer. Its sacrifice has been noble, but now it’s time to rescue it from its long suffering. The word?
“Friend”
Every social networking site uses this word with flagrant disregard for its actual meaning, and the endless proliferation of these sites means that the ill-treatment is only becoming more overt. All of these Pokémon sites, where the only goal is to collect as many of these “friends” as humanly possible, are using the word. MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, LiveJournal, Xanga, Vox, Flickr, Tagged, LinkedIn, Virb, &c, &c. Each and every one of them uses the term “friend” to mean any of the following things:
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Person I actually know in real life.
Person I sort of know, but have never actually met.
Person who is on the friendlist of a friend.
Person who went to scholl/college/university with me, whom I didn’t really know, but, through that institution, shares A Connection with me.
Person whose writing/photography/artwork I like.
A band I like, or tell myself I like, because they’re “cool.”
A girl who frequently posts pictures of her boobs.
An ex whom I’m still moping over, and read about in the hope that they say something about me on their profile.
A “cool” person whose radiated “coolness” I wish to bask in.
A person who friended me for any of the above reasons, making me friend them back so that I don’t give the impression of being mean or aloof.
You’ll notice that all but one of the things on that list bear no actual similarity to behaviour you’d normally associate with friendship. Some sites extend things a bit and use the term “contact” in addition to “friend”, but that still implies a level of physical connection and understanding that is still probably unwarranted in most cases.
Now, I realise that I’m old and curmudgeonly, and that these sites aren’t particularly aimed at people like me, but I’m still a member of lots of them; in each case having a handful of “friends” on each, because most of the people I know in real life all prefer a different instance of this type of site, so signing up is the easiest way for me to keep in touch with them. Having said that, I still see how and why the sites work, I don’t think that they’re a bad thing, but I do think that people should be clearer about what they’re actually for.
And what is that? Well, there are subtle differences in them all: Flickr is focussed almost purely on people comparing their photos, LiveJournal is more text/blog oriented, Vox/Virb are predicated around media/content sharing, LinkedIn - because of its corporate bent - attracts brown-nosers of all stripes, and MySpace is essentially one big forum in which teenagers willingly offer themselves up to the gods of advertising.
(No, really, whatever it started as, MySpace has gradually become a cesspool of unavoidable product placement. It is a version of Minority Report that we all threw ourselves into willingly and enthusiastically. Even bands are now realising that they have to have a MySpace presence if they want to be successful, and as a rule they are the last ones to know how to sell themselves. I have a whole other rant here, entitled “Hey, bands! Everybody is making more money off of your music than you are” but it’s a very hard rant to write because its spotlight quickly roves over to “Hey, Paul-the-videogame-developer! Lots of people are getting rich off of your work, and it sure as shit isn’t you!”)
So, uh, yes. As I was saying, they all have a slightly different focus, but the primary activity in each one is attracting social cachet to yourself. The more “friends” you can lay your name to, the better score you’re getting in the social networking game. You can call this score whatever you like: Kudos, Interestingness, Whuffie, it doesn’t matter, it all means the same thing. The more of it you attract, the better you’re doing when compared to your peers.
That’s no different than what has gone on for the rest of human history, of course. It’s just a new way of measuring success, where previously you’d look at how nice a car you had, what parties you were invited to, how well respected your family was, how much land you owned, how many slaves you owned, how far above the open sewers in the street you lived. That concept has always been there, but it’s never been confused with the term “friendship” before.
That’s all I’m moaning about, really. I just wish we could be clearer in our terminology. Communication is all we have and it’s hard enough already, let’s not make it any more difficult to get our meaning across than it already is.
That’s why we need A New Word. It doesn’t even matter how we pick it. Just go out, find a random Frenchman, get him to make up an unused, nice-sounding word and let’s all use that.
As long as I don’t have to involuntarily cringe every time I read the word “friend”.