The End of Friendship

Hello, reader. How are you? Well, I hope.

See? I'm not an unfriendly person. I might walk around town with my headphones on because I don't want to talk to people, but that hardly means that if forced into a conversation with a stranger, I won't be perfectly civil to them. It doesn't even mean that I am against the idea of meeting new people. It just means that I like to choose the places and times that I do meet new people.

Once again, the internet complicates things. I have always put up a stalwart resistance to the social networking phenomenon. Yeah, I know, reading that on a blog isn't exactly convincing, but while my friends (the real, live, actual kind that hug and punch and sing) were joining MySpace and the like, I stayed away. I figured that if there was anyone I wanted to get in touch with, I would call them. Or go to their house and knock. For someone who makes their living on the internets, I have to admit I am still a bit of a Luddite sometimes.

Anyway, I recently broke down and joined Facebook. I found that it actually was a decent way to keep in touch with my many friends around the country. Unfortunately, as a side effect, there are people who I never thought of as friends, who are now getting in touch with me through it and wanting us to call ourselves "Friends".

For obvious reasons, language is important to me. The choices people make as to what to say and write say a lot about them, and I like to think I choose my words carefully. To me, "friend" is a word with power. It means something. It implies a relationship, or at least a mutual caring for each other's well-being. My issue with social networking in general, and today's "Friend Request" in particular, is that I believe it waters down what it means to be someone's friend. If I accepted that request, it would not only add to my list of friends, it would make each of the others on that list (about whom I legitimately care) less meaningful. And I won't do that. I've always believed that you can't be friends with everyone, and that if they thought about it, no one would really want to be. I stick by that. I just wish I could add people as "Acquaintances" or "People I would wave at if I saw them in the street", or perhaps start a new Facebook list of "I guess I'm glad you're still not dead. I guess."