How many friends do you have?

Really?

That many…?

Alright, permit me to rephrase; how many people are there in your life, of whom you know the name, age, address and phone number; of whom you know the birthdate without being reminded, of whom you know the favourite food, favourite pastimes, and with whom you frequently acquaint?

Fewer?

Right, far fewer.

 

2013 I opened a Facebook page. This page didn’t allow me to see who else was ‘online’, nor did it allow me to ‘find’ other ‘friends’ and certainly, it did not allow me to creep onto the profiles of people I’d never met and who, let’s be fair, I had no intention of meeting.

2019 I opened a Facebook profile. I promptly ‘invited’ the few ‘friends’ from my Facebook ‘page’ to become ‘friends’ of my new Facebook ‘profile’, including one particular Vietnamese woman who I had met in 2017 and with whom I had grown close.

It was at this stage, still relatively ignorant/naïve to the pervasive ability and indeed the power of Facebook, that my otherwise simple world with no more friends than I could count on my own two hands, was figuratively blown apart.

It turned out, like most younger Vietnamese folk, this 27-year-old woman had literally ten thousand ‘Facebook friends’ and, the thing is about Vietnamese folk, any chance they come upon to befriend Western folk, they will keenly seize.

Presumably (bear in mind this presumption is only formed once my comprehension of ‘what-the-hell-is-happening-to-my-new-Facebook-profile’ has been forcibly adjusted), a portion of my Vietnamese friend’s Facebook friends had seen that she had befriended a White folk and, as earlier pointed out is their way, had quickly seized the opportunity to also befriend a White folk.

Literally only hours after alerting my legitimate Vietnamese friend to my new Facebook profile, my new Facebook profile was figuratively inundated with ‘friend requests’.

Initially shocked, I soon realised what was happening: these Viet folk didn’t know me and likely had no desire to know me, thus it was purely an attempt at – I was being used for the purpose of – status-building; seemingly positioning a White face among their many thousands of Asian-faced ‘friends’ would afford the aforementioned Facebook user a sense of perceived eminence.

Being the prudent (ignorant) Facebook user that I always aspire to be, at the start, I was discerningly going through each of these applicants’ profiles to see if I in fact wanted to be their friend; of course, I now realise they were not asking to be my friend at all, they were simply asking to be my ‘Facebook friend’, which is rather less meaningful and, as endearments go, borders on pointless (yet, for the record, as I found no reason to disallow any of these applicants – though young many of them did appear to be – and although I intend to keep in contact with none of them, they are all now ‘friends’ of mine).

The truly devastating thing about Facebook friendship though, is that to some people, it does mean something.

The reality is, ‘Facebook friendship’ does not indicate how popular you are – not even a little bit – all it probably indicates is how many ‘friend requests’ you are capable of sending out to people who you don’t know but who then think that your profile picture (which, as I now understand, does not have to pose even a modicum of resemblance to you) looks nice.

Therefore, while it does have its benefits in that it has increased the ease with which people communicate thereby in a sense making life easier, in my belated opinion (‘belated’ in that it has taken me a number of years to be bothered to involve myself with Sociopathic Media), the insatiable beast they call ‘Facebook’ is not such a friendly place for youngsters; this compelling desire to pointlessly accumulate Facebook friends, likely for no other reason than to increase their perceived status, is placing massive amounts of pressure on young people to compete with their actual friends and, in the process, is likely breeding resentment thus destroying actual friendships.

Despite its downsides though, unquestionably perpetuated by the advent of Smartphones, Facebook is just about the most popular thing in the world; it effortlessly creates trends, sets fashions in clothing, food, speech, manner, also just about every other facet of life and, as time goes on with technology’s hold on the world growing evermore tenacious, Facebook’s position is set to only become more dominating.

Predictably Facebook’s reign will continue to be responsible for the betterment, also the ruination, of people’s lives.

Gosh, well done, Mr Zuckerberg; how proud your mother must be.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Sue Mene Friend

Photography by Niva C Friend