Friends on the Internets
Sarada Peri
Issue date: 3/21/07 Section: Op-Ed
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At the risk of dating myself, I admittedly got my first email account when I arrived at college many moons ago. "The Internets" was quite exciting in those days. My university used some ancient system that basically gave us an email program that looked like DOS - you know, where you had to type in commands onto a bland-looking screen, as opposed to pointing and clicking your way to over-connected bliss.
After email we discovered ICQ, the instant messaging service that now, in an age of Google chat and Blackberries, seems about as modern as the messenger pigeon. And then came the online communities.
I was first exposed to Myspace as a site for amateur musicians to post and share their music. Myspace rapidly deteriorated into a place for dirty old men to surf for sex with 14 year-olds as well as a forum documenting the hedonistic excesses of bored suburban high school students. The site's questionable transactions and content made it the subject of parental protest, Dateline specials and diatribes on C-SPAN by the occasional Viagra-filled Congressman.
Sites like Myspace and Friendster allow you to create a personal profile complete with pictures and details about your hobbies, sexual preferences and interests. You can also connect with others and have them added as your "friends" - and one can easily rack up many friends.
According to dictionary.com (as I shamefully cannot find my old paper copy of the dictionary), a friend is defined as: 1) a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard; 2) a person who gives assistance; patron; 3) a person who is on good terms with another; a person who is not hostile.
By the time you get to number 243 on your Friendster list, I imagine that the closest definition of friend that applies is "a person who is not hostile".
But then came Facebook. Upon returning to the world of school, I was quickly informed that Friendster was, like, so 2000, and that, like, only really old people use it. Apparently Facebook is the new Friendster, which was the old Myspace, which was the new Instant Messenger/Match.com, which was the new dinner and a movie, live and in living color.
After email we discovered ICQ, the instant messaging service that now, in an age of Google chat and Blackberries, seems about as modern as the messenger pigeon. And then came the online communities.
I was first exposed to Myspace as a site for amateur musicians to post and share their music. Myspace rapidly deteriorated into a place for dirty old men to surf for sex with 14 year-olds as well as a forum documenting the hedonistic excesses of bored suburban high school students. The site's questionable transactions and content made it the subject of parental protest, Dateline specials and diatribes on C-SPAN by the occasional Viagra-filled Congressman.
Sites like Myspace and Friendster allow you to create a personal profile complete with pictures and details about your hobbies, sexual preferences and interests. You can also connect with others and have them added as your "friends" - and one can easily rack up many friends.
According to dictionary.com (as I shamefully cannot find my old paper copy of the dictionary), a friend is defined as: 1) a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard; 2) a person who gives assistance; patron; 3) a person who is on good terms with another; a person who is not hostile.
By the time you get to number 243 on your Friendster list, I imagine that the closest definition of friend that applies is "a person who is not hostile".
But then came Facebook. Upon returning to the world of school, I was quickly informed that Friendster was, like, so 2000, and that, like, only really old people use it. Apparently Facebook is the new Friendster, which was the old Myspace, which was the new Instant Messenger/Match.com, which was the new dinner and a movie, live and in living color.
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