Friend Phobia

So I was having a discussion with a friend of mine the other night…we were talking about Facebook. I personally love Myspace (the more “blue collar” of the increasingly popular social networking sites) because you can create fun backgrounds, it’s pretty simple to navigate and if people don’t have their profile set to private, you can see all their pictures and stuff. Facebook just seems more complicated to me because there are all of these crazy applications you are asked to add (Superwall, Funwall, Garden Patch, Bumper Sticker, Notes, and on and on and on!) and all of the applications ask you to give permission for them to access all of your information and that creeps me out, so I never add any of them and then I can’t see what people are writing to me on those walls and I feel bad rejecting everyone’s flowers, flair, patches, etc.

Well, anyway…the premise of these sites is that you can post pictures and information about yourself, find people from the present or past and send comments and messages to one another. The cool thing is that you can stalk people, oops, I mean catch up with people from the past and see their kids, pets, homes, families, etc. It’s less formal than email and it honestly provides hours of fun to all of us who are hopelessly addicted!

So, here’s the deal. As outgoing as I am, I experience a sense of fear and trepidation when it comes to adding people as my friends! Not all people…it’s totally cool to add your current friends, family and co-workers or even people you met at the cool party last weekend. It starts to get sticky when you are dying to check out the lives and photos of people you only remotely know, or that you know as the friend of your friend’s brother’s sister’s cousin and OMG she has the best teeth ever!! I mean now I have to check out her profile…I have to see these teeth that my friend thinks highly enough of to mention them to me. So I get online, enter my username and password, search for this chick with the great chompers, and then:

1. If I’m on Myspace, I hope that her profile is public so that I can read all about her and look at tons of pictures of these famous teeth.

2. If I’m on Facebook, I beat my fists on the desk, because everyone’s profile is private until they are added as a friend so now I have to dig out my magnifying glass to get a look at those pearly whites in the teeny, tiny thumbnail picture that pops up when I search for her…it’s so inconvenient!

So I am faced with the decision, “Do I send a friend request and satisfy my curiosity but potentially look desperate and creepy? Or, Do I give up and never get the chance to check her out?”

I’m thinking that my friend and I should get together, throw back a few glasses of wine and just start sending out friend requests to all the people we want to stalk, oops, I mean get to know!