Viva la Vida

This is BJ.

Clair is gone. She's in facebook. She has finally signed up... clicked the "I ACCEPT" button and signed her life away. She already has 30 friends. It' been consistent: 10 friends an hour so far. We're in the Pacific Time Zone, though, so I reckon some people will be hitting the hay soon. I expect 10 more friends an hour from 10:00 tomorrow AM.

She hasn't figured out how to use all the features yet, or that there is no real purpose. She keeps asking "what is this for?"

Anyway, she kept laughing. She wouldn't have a reason; she'd just be on some page and start laughing. I guess she's feeling this buzz that's become unfamiliar since high school when there were people around all the time, so many friends to choose from.

So doing the math (there's what, 16 waking hours in a day?) she'll have 160 new friends a day for maybe two months before it starts to peter out. Having friends is nice. Having friends on facebook is different. Faceboook admits this in the confirmation for accepting a friend. It says something like "facebook needs to make sure you know this person before you can be friends on facebook." Real life's requirement for friendship is a mutual understanding. Facebook's requirement is: you have to know the person.

This is not to diminish the incredible power and advantage of facebook. If Clair ever comes to me in a moment of insecurity and says"nobody likes me," I'll be able to check her profile and say, "no, you have 10,318 friends, Clair! You're the coooooooooolest!"

Socializing is good. I say go for it. I was surprosed who's on facebook at any given time. I don't have a profile. I'm not saying "yet" either... we'll see. Anyway, I hope you all add Clair as a friend. She's good people.