the friendster phenomenon

in case you don't know what friendster is... wait, you don't know what friendster is? shame on you. i'm not going to explain what it is, you should know. if not, you are not worthy to call yourself tech-savvy. or tech anything. because everyone knows what friendster is.

so i had a thought about this and i aptly calls my thinking the friendster phenomenon (hence, the title of this post... duh...). i think friendster began with a almost-holy goal, to connect old friends, to make new friends, to maybe get a boyfriend/girlfriend/activity partner (hey this is one of the categories!) in the process. but nooo... this is not really happening. instead, people check on how many "friends" you have. only 200? not popular enough. more than 500? wow dude, you're pretty cool. had to add a second, third, heck fourth friendster account because the first one is at capacity? now i wanna be your friend! nevermind that all your "friends" are paris hilton, hillary duff, bill clinton, and the various bands out there. what's important is you have 546 more friends than i do, so you must be cool. that or you spend waaaayy to much time adding friends on friendster (no pun intended. wait, was that even a pun?)

that said, friendster also becomes a place where you can check out your exes' relationship status. you open his/her fs (abbr. for friendster people! get with the program!), and you see he/she does not have a bf/gf yet (and you secretly smile your secret smile with a look that says, yes!! and i already have one! ha-ha!), and if your ex bf/gf happens to have a new bf/gf, you open the new bf/gf's friendster, and check on him/her. that's how it goes.

and now, friendster becomes the center of your social life. you can see how many people've viewed your page (oh my, only 2 people checked out my page on the last month? damn i must be getting un-popular...). you check out if your current bf/gf puts on "in a relationship" status or still "single" (red flag!). you know who views you (or like me, remains anonymous... it's more fun i tell ya'). the "comments" section becomes a text-messaging-like purpose. i have no time to call you or to email you or to even text you, but let me say what i need to say on your friendster page.

that said, i still check my friendster everyday. i do check my exes' page. i have less than 500 friends though, so i guess i need to add the backstreet boys to my friends list.