Facing up to Facebook

I loved Friendster, I'll say it right now.

I feared MySpace-- it lacked Friendster's rigid borders. You could make your own template, share music, network. Bands had profiles, comedians had profiles. People had 13,000 friends. It seemed instantly more commercial, less honest. Does a band call "The Amity" from somewhere in the South really want to be friends? To they want to go the Atlantic Center for an "I Gotta Have It" Birthday Cake Remix at Cold Stone Creamery? Do they want to come over and watch "Dude, Where's My Car?" dubbed into French ("Mec, Ou Est Ma Caisse?")? Do they want to sit in the same room and Gchat each other? Well then these are not friends. To them, I am but a digit in their Friend Number.

I resisted Facebook. A third online profile? What am I, some kind of pervert?

I was sick of trying to drum up a reasonable list of favorite movies and music (since when is it that the accepted way of defining ourselves is by what entertains us?), a list that says, "OK, I'll let you in on who I am, but I'm not aggressively trying to impress you." You know, a concise, not-overwhelming list: Airplane, Scent of a Woman, Splash! Along those lines. But when it came to a 3rd profile, I was suddenly sick of trying to reduce myself to a little package that sketched out my parameters sufficiently for the perusing pleasure of anyone from a stranger to an ex. And you know, with all these online things, you're not learning anything about people except how they see themselves. "I am cute and flirty" = I am sad and lonely, and so on.

But the internet is a seductress, so good at the casual wasting of time, and frankly, my sister lured me into Facebook with the promise of access to her online photo albums-- she takes great pictures and Facebook has unlimited photo hosting. So onboard I came.

Dare I say it? I love Facebook! I do! It's sort of, SORT OF, exclusive, in that you have to have a college affiliation to belong. But what that really means is that each online identity really has a person behind it (i.e. no "The Amity's"). And because the network is somewhat limited (compared to MySpace), it's harder to try to use it for self-promotion, so people generally don't.

Its design is clean and runs glitchlessly, unlike Friendster, which was made of Legos, and the photo sharing really is a valuable feature.

I contemplated committing Friendster Suicide-- deleting my account. But I just couldn't. Friendster getting wiped out by MySpace is like Phil Donahue getting mauled by Springer. Phil was creaky. His suits looked cheap. He had no grasp of slang. He looked like he ate canned ham. But I didn't want to see him go down. And I don't want to put a nail in Friendster's coffin, either.

Maybe I'll commit MySpace Suicide. I never even check the fucking thing. But then-- well sometimes it's good for spying on people.

I guess I'm stuck with three online profiles. And two blogs. Maybe I AM a pervert!