Facebook

Post Reply New Topic

I am 39 years old. I was looking at the Facebook profiles of people from my high school. I am amazed at how many friends some people have. Some people that I thought had nothing to do with each other in high school are friends on Facebook.

I understand that being friends on Facebook doesn't mean they are friends in real life, but I am still surprised.

Does anyone else feel the same way.

Last edited by KevinLA on 12 Sep 2010, 12:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.

No, it doesn't surprise me as much. I've had a similar experience to yours recently, I looked up some friends from school on Facebook (I'm 23), but didn't pay much attention to just how many friends they each had- I did, however, notice some names of people on their friends lists they weren't really that close to in school... I figure that, when you're on a networking site like facebook, it's easy to accept people who request your FB friendship when you were only acquaintances in school, or at least liked each other a bit. And it's also easy to add a 'friend of a friend' to the list you can sometimes have a chat with or may discover you have things in common with... But I saw some of my friends had moved to different parts of the country, so even though they had friended each other on FB, I don't think they meet each other too often in person anymore.

Me, I don't use facebook or other networking sites that much- I only joined now for my old friends, in fact. I had a Facebook account under a different name last year, getting involved with some posters from the comic book message board I visit, but it turned out FB wasn't really my style.

Some people who didn't even like me in high school are quite chatty with me on Facebook. And the few people I was quite close to in high school barely talk to me at all. It's odd...but it's been almost 20 years now, so people change a lot.

I'm not really surprised by that... but what I am surprised at is that some of the people who were in my circle of friends have old pictures of them hanging out from back in high school (I graduated 6 years ago) with people that I didnt even know they hung out with. Or they'll have pictures of them hanging out (like my whole group of friends) back in the day at one of their houses and not ONCE was I ever invited to hang out with any of them outside of school. WTF! No one ever asked me if I wanted to hang out after school. But, yet they have pictures of them hanging out in each others bedrooms. Even though its been years, it kind of ticks me off a little.

I've been in pretty much the same situation and I know how you feel. I can't tell you how to deal with it but personally I've just let it go. Its not worth your energy, not at this point.

I kind of had the same situation with someone after high school. Someone who I know was not his favorite person in high school saw me in a bar and was friendly towards me. It makes no sense.

I think neurotypicals are kind of on auto pilot. They are friendly without any regard to the past.

Facebook is as far from real life socialising as you're going to get. As with all other equivilents, when these sites are popular, everyone adds everyone and it just becomes rediculous. I have no interest in these sites. I am more friends with people on this site that don't know my name or hardly anything about me than I am going to be with someone I haven't spoken to for years and is trying to ring a bland conversation out with questions like "What's up?" "What you doing these days?" etc etc etc. And comments like "That's a lovely photo of you; it reminds me of my plant pot in my living room".

I can actually agree with that. I even have facebook friends that hardly ever talk to me at school. Well, I do have people to talk to on facebook, but not a whole lot.

Most of the time, I am the one sending facebook friend requests. Now, most of the time, I just wait for people to send me friend requests and the ones that do send me friend requests are people that I sorta don't know but they know some of my facebook friends. Honestly, why have a facebook if you don't talk to a lot of your friends?

majority of my friends are classmates from high school who most i havent seen in person in almost 10 years. i recently joined fb after being true to myspace for many years and realized that it truly was becoming the abandoned amusement park of social networking. i find it hilarious that most of my friends have 400,500,600,700,1000 friends. and im like "really?". now i know most of these friends showed up over the years on fb so they had to be working hard on it to be getting to those big friend numbers adding in all the celebrities and the musicians and the comedians and everyone else who is famous in internet land. and i believe its an unstated phenomenon that most fb users are now essentially friend collectors as i like to call them. i mean really who the hell has the time, effort, patience, and desire to know, truly know 400/500 people in this world. its unrealistic. sure i understand casual/related friends and family. thats no problem. but if only people were able to admit the bs about their friends numbers, i think people would be a lot more real and relatable and not all egotistical and selfish. i mean these people have to take some amount of pride when they see their friends numbers grow by the hundreds in a years time. to me its sick and stupid. and its just sad that most of these people are educated adults who got all wrapped up in the social networking game.

anyone else here a casual/rare user of cellphones/texting as i am and just plain hates that people are glued to 2/3" screens more so than they talk face to face? thats another good topic, if its not already here on wp. lol.

Actually the two people who are most chatty with me I think realized that we had a lot more in common. One married a guy who is bipolar, so I think she has a new appreciation for some of my struggles and the other got really into social justice causes (as did I) so we talk a lot about that. Neither of these girls bullied me or anything. I was pretty much ignored in high school--no friends, no one liked me, no dances or parties. But it's not to say they are ignoring the past.

FB is, frankly, easier for me because type takes all the nuance out of communication--you have to be specific and literal. And I can evaluate what people say and what my response should be. Just like posting here, I can think things over before responding. I'm not this suave in person...

Yes I know what you're saying.

I have Face Book. I ignore requests from randoms and people I know of who aren't really my "friends".

I have 24 "friends". Only three of them are actually friends.

Mostly I have family who lives abroad or out of town. I have my children so I can keep an eye on things.

If I have accepted someone and then find there's no interaction between us, I delete them.

I have no qualms deleting or ignoring people. It's only an internet program after all...not real life.

I'm not surprised. Facebook friends are merely real life acquaintances.

Hmm.

I wanted to address this and just say, if someone wasn't nice to you in high school, chances are they will be after because high school was the high point of their life and they realize that the real world is nothing like how school was. The unpopular kids or the people who didn't really care about the social order in school are usually the ones to have an easier time once graduated while the jocks and cheerleaders try to make it by in life by doing what they did in high school and fail. My parents had that experience; they weren't very popular in school, but after school a lot of people who didn't even look their way wanted to make friends or date them.

I'm not really sure how to explain this but I have an understanding of why people do it, and this doesn't apply to every single jock or popular person, of course.

I've never understood how anyone could have 309723150915 friends on these social sites because the few I have on Facebook don't even try to talk to me. And I have more internet friends added than real life friends. I like to keep my friends list to, you know, actual friends. Everyone else cares about having a million friends, it's the numbers that count for them, not the actual people.

And regarding the auto pilot thing, that's completely assuming that every single one of them is the same way when it's not even close to that. It does seem that., more often then not, it's like that, but there are the nice exceptions. Not everyone is an ass. Maybe those people are trying to avoid conflict and make up for being idiots in the past, you never know.

My thoughts and feelings on this abomination called facebook can best be understood with this Southpark clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SgkfghupFEV

Seriously. I am glad people are nicer to me as they age but this friend catcher machine that is a status meter coupled with pictures of me floating around the internet ( I feel if i am the only person left on this earth that can't pose for pictures and looks hideous in them unless they are professionally taken ) kind of creeps me out.

It's so fake. I read some group on facebook called "It's better to have 5 real friends than 100 fake ones" very true.

"Let's pretend we were friends" I don't believe a lot of what people say on there anymore. It's just a place for people to exagerate the life they don't have and it makes people without a life feel like they have accomplished nothing. That is why I quite social networking sites. One reason I will not go to high school reunions either. It's so fake. Let's pretend we have the perfect life only to go home after the reunion and have a husband who is cheating on me, 50K in credit card debt, husband just lost his job. yada yada. So what, I saw you on facebook, what is the point of being in your physical presence.