I Friended You!

It takes me awhile sometimes to come to some conclusions about things in life.  I blame some of it on my general hard headedness, but some of it is due to my Autistic traits.  Like my literal mindedness, I know I have talked about it before.  For those that have not caught that lecture or need a refresher, words have very specific meanings and I tend to treat them as static, but people use words very loosely and our culture often uses words to mean things that go beyond the static definition.  Due to my linguistic rigidity I often get the intent wrong.  Like when people say literally I did not think they meant literal, but literature so people would say literally, meaning the truth and I would think it mean fiction.

Lately there has been some cultural confusion over the word friend.  To me a friend is someone that you share with deeply and have a lot of mutual concern for both ends of the relationship for both parties.  Admittedly, as an introvert, my perception of what a friend is, is quite a bit deeper than the perception of what an extravert feels for the relationship: friend.  But it is basically the same, just a bit shallower, meaning the degree of depths is not as important.

The problem is, people through around the word friend around a lot and it can be confusing.  Friends are friends and acquaintances are acquaintances and they are not really the same thing.  If you read all my blog posts it does not make you either one.  I find Facebook to be a little confusing, because it uses the word "friend" to identify people that you know, all the people you know.

I recently went through a purge of my Facebook "friends."  I realized that I had three categories of "friends."  There were my friends and this was the smallest category.  I know these people, I know details about their lives that is not posted on Facebook and many of my Friends are not on Facebook.  The second category I call acquaintances.  These are people are people whom I have met and may have been friends or maybe not.  They are people that you know stuff about but mutually don't really care about their lives, or perhaps they are people who you have never met but have had a connection with and share some similarities; perhaps you could be friends if there was not twelve thousand kilometers of rock and magma between us. And then there is the third category, space fillers.  Space fillers are friends that you need to acquire to play games on Facebook.  When I had a farm on FarmVille, I had to have more friends.  When I played another game and reached vice president to a clan, I had to open myself up to the three hundred clan members so that I had a direct link and then I had to friend rival clan leaders for diplomatic purposes.  Soon I had five hundred friends.  I got rid of the spacers.  I got rid of a few acquaintances too.

The problem with the use in Facebook and e word friend is that it is devaluing the meaning of friend and if it does not devalue it means that you are treating people as friends who do not share that feeling.  I get status updates from people all the time and beneath the update there is an open box asking me to make a comment and I don't know if they would appreciate me commenting or should I hit the like button and does hitting like mean that you like what they said or is it about acknowledging that I have seen their update; letting them know that I see what they said.  

The trouble is, the real trouble, seeing updates from acquaintances, is letting people see into their lives and is forming connections with my life; I feel like a friend, for real, in their life, but at the same time I feel like a voyeur or a peeping tom, looking in on a life that I would not normally be allowed to.  Some acquaintances I would love to be friends with, but I am not really their friend just because I am their friend on Facebook.  

It comes down and back to my laws of friendship.

I.  There shall be regular communication.

II.  There shall be common interests.

III.  Thy shall participate in multiple venues or aspects of life.

IV.  Thy shall like each other.

V.  There shall be mutual respect.

VI.  I, II, IV, and V determine if you are acquaintances,  III determines if you are friends and how strong the friendship is.

The trouble is that it is true.  It throws me into despair when I think about it.  I recently met MagicEyes, about a year ago, and I mentioned the laws.  She disagreed, but it IS true.  She read my blogs, I read hers and we talked mutually conversing, in person, on Facebook, by texting.  She is not my friend anymore because we don't talk anymore, we only text.  She can read my blog until her eyes burn, but she is not really a friend anymore.  She is an acquaintance.  GardenerGuru and a friend in BigSmoke do not have Facebook, but we regularly communicate in person and have all the rest.  It is different.

I wish that you could friend friends on Facebook, have acquaintances and have space holders.  It would be simple, friends you would see all their posts and be free to comment on them.  Acquaintances would have some posts and you could look at only some of their pictures, but no comments unless posts are open.  Space holders have a blank page with a picture to look at and you can talk via mail.  Friends are a special relationship that needs to be recast, after the Facebook experience, back into what it was.