MySpace vs. Facebook (A Friend In Need)

I’m two months away from turning 37, but I did something recently that should qualify me for senior citizen benefits at the multiplex, or at least Hometown Buffet. After months of ignoring my MySpace page, I finally made the jump to Facebook. Finally! One more magazine article about the site’s filthy-rich genius, Mark Zuckerburg, and the disgruntled Harvard coders who despise him, and I was going to puke.

That I’m only now getting on Facebook probably says something about the college I attended, my former church, or where I get my ideologically-tailored news online—I’m not sure. But could someone please explain what all the fuss is about?
On Facebook, I have an articulate, bright, and clean site, without any music or other frills, that looks like it was creatively inspired by a corporate shill in conjunction with my middle school computer tech. I get to read little comments about what my (scoff) 29 friends are doing at any given minute. Right now, Sarah is “shooting moose with her AK 47 while singing cumbaya,” John is “soooooooo tired” and Karl is “torturing a recently rescued shelter poodle with a lit cigar.”

In August, The Pew Research Center for The People and The Press issued a hefty new report: “Audience Segments in A Changing News Environment” that looked at new trends in online and digital news. Aside from some odd references to something called “the traditional print media,” the study mostly confirmed what I already suspected: You are nothing if you do not have over 1,000 friends on Facebook.
It took me several years to get up to 200 friends on MySpace—and now Facebook is telling me I have to start all over again? That’s like getting yanked back into junior high, given a braided rattail mullet and the name Erskine Patton-Dick. Not good.
It got me thinking about this whole friend thing. Some people out there will befriend anyone. Celebrities, porn sites, anime characters, video games, fast food chains. Shouldn’t there be some requirement to determine whether the friendship is actually human (and according to Wordnet) “a person known well and regarded with trust and affection?” I doubt that Naomi Klein, Javier Bardem, or Werner Herzog feel that way about me, but maybe I’m wrong. I don’t think the crazed fans running sites in their names have a much better idea, either.

So I’m offering a brief friendship quiz, free of charge to Mr. Zuckerburg—provided he does not try to claim the idea was his—so geeks like me will stand a fighting chance in this brave new social order.


QUESTIONAIRRE

1. Your sister just had a nasty break-up with her state trooper husband. You would:
A. Plant crack in the state trooper’s locker.
B. Prank call 9-11 all night with your slumber party friends.
C. Challenge the trooper to a game of pick-up basketball for your sister’s future.
D. Get the trooper fired and if not that, fire his supervisor.


2. Your 17-year-old, unwed child is pregnant. You would:
A. Comfort her with a new SUV wrapped in a giant red bow.
B. Make her high school boyfriend the head of FEMA.
C. Beg her to visit a single teen mother and help for a week.
D. Take her on a whirlwind media tour of the United States.


3. Your friend joined a fringe group that believes, after the coming apocalypse, that Alaska will be the only inhabitable place on earth, populated by a race of super-warriors who know the riddle of steel. You would:
A. Call producers at Jerry Springer.
B. Have your friend abducted by The Promise Keepers.
C. Shoot your friend in the face while hunting.
D. Encourage your friend to run for vice president of the U.S.


4. Your friend is being investigated by the liberal national media. You would:
A. Get her to change her hairstyle.
B. Bring her some fresh moose pie.
C. Dump a bucket of pig blood on her head to make her angry.
D. Help her figure out how to sink back into obscurity.


5. Your friend was raped and impregnated by her father. You would:
A. Help her pick out baby clothes.
B. Keep it a personal matter.
C. Suggest baby names like Javelin, Skagway, Snowmachine, and Geo.
D. Have the father fired, and if not him, then his supervisor.