This morning I went through a backlog of invitations from would-be, er, Friendster friends. The notices get sent to an email address I rarely check, so I’d kind of forgotten about Friendster for a few weeks. This also prompted me to update my profile on the service, filling in more about my interests and so forth.
One thing I discovered is that most of my friends are amateur comedians, and their profiles and testimonials are just about the furthest thing from the kind of earnest, straightforward recommendations that I think the founding Friendsters intended.
As I started to write, I also found myself succumbing to the same foolishness. In fact, it seemed virtually impossible for me to write anything remotely serious and so I goofed my way through the entire exercise. It was fun and I burned a good two hours writing smart-aleck testimonials, but I wonder if I wasn’t just resorting to a kind of social defensiveness. It felt kind of like walking into a party and, in order to mask a fear of rejection, engaging in obnoxious, socially disruptive behavior. I’m sure that was it, actually.
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