It’s
funny that the article or subject of “friends” and friendships is being
discussed here as I recently wrote on my Facebook account regarding something
similar. I spoke of how a person is either my friend or they are not, I do not
have any in-between. I mocked how I do not see myself as important to
differentiate between friends and acquaintances. You are either my friend or
you are not. This is not meant in a negative way but simply to say that I do
not think so much of myself.
In
terms of social media, such as MySpace & Facebook, friends are anyone that
you accept as one, including people you may not know. With Twitter, there are
no friends just people you follow and those that follow you. In reference to
the aforementioned sites, everyone you connect with are your “friends”.
The argument
presented in the article highlights the understanding and clarification of the
term friend. Boyd argues, “…Friendship helps people write community
into being in social network sites”. She further explains, “By examining what
different participants groups do on social network sites, this paper
investigates what Friendship means and how Friendship affects the culture of
the sites.” Although I can see her reasoning, I do not understand the logic as
to why it matters to her whether the people “friending” one another are really
friends or not. It comes down to a person’s perception and perspective of the
particular person and why they became friends on the sites.
I personally have several friends
on Facebook that I do not know or should say did not know but have made leads
into knowing on a friendship level. There was a time when I had over 800
friends and never spoke to about 700 of them so respectively, they really were
not friends but there was no other way to connect to them at the time.
Currently, Facebook goes through the occasional maintenance and upgrades and
have improved the way “friends” are added and filtered through your lists.
It seems as Boyd suspects that
there may be ulterior motives for people friending individuals that they do not
know. This conclusion is drawn when she states, “While some participants
believe that people should only indicate meaningful relationships, it is
primarily non-participants who perpetuate the expectation that Friending is the
same as listing one’s closest buddies.” While I do believe this as partially
true, I do not believe this is the case with everyone. For me specifically, I
have accepted friend request from people I did not know because we have mutual
friends. It is kind of a contradiction because I hate the fact that people who
may have seen me somewhere or we have friends in common think that they know me
or we are friends. My issue with that is simply, we do not know each other and
I do not want to be attached to someone I am unfamiliar with. With social media
sites, I can partially “research” the individual on the site before I make a
decision to accept them or not.
I do not think the term friend or
friendships as related to social media should be concluded to have the same
context as the actual meaning because in reality, people that I am friends with
on Facebook or the likes I would never be friends with. In summation, it is all
for entertainment purposes.
apt review, and cool that you p[osted this on facebook recently!
ReplyDeleteI remember losing friends upon entering high school. Four years later it happened again. All of a sudden they're back because some website that allows them to??
ReplyDeleteThe problem with nature is that it's a problem for everyone. There's nothing wrong with watching the seasons change. Who doesn't like having to get new gear?