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DemonKia -> RE: the pros and cons of a friends list? (10/2/2009 12:18:42 PM)
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FR, after read thru
People have been forming friendships & other significant relationships (business, love, diplomacy, art, science, etc) by correspondence for centuries. The nineteenth century saw a flourishing of letter exchanges as a fundament of social intercourse. The internet, it seems to me, is spreading that to a wider audience. (& is thus spreading literacy & critical thinking to minds hitherto untouched.) & this is after letter writing had stagnated in the later portions of the twentieth century
Confession!!! I'm a 'friending' slut. But I know tons of people in real life too. I've lived in the same, relatively small-ish community for well over two decades. I get out & do stuff. (I especially tend to suffer from that dreaded 'insufficient reluctance' disease & volunteer to run things occasionally, yikes . .. . ) & if I walk partway 'cross town I'll run into several people I know, most pretty casually . .. . . But if pressed to describe a relationship between myself & most of those persons, friend is a word that might spring easily . . . . . In my head I tend to qualify most with 'casual friendly acquaintances', but that seems awful nitpicky to me, too . . . ...
(&, sorta sidenote Confession!!!! I'm an ego-maniac who has easily spent way more time reading my own profile & otherwise mucking about with my own online presence than I have actually interacting with people, online, lol . . . . . Hanging out on the message boards here on CM is slowly shifting that balance, but, hey, I like me. That's always my plan B for jus' 'bout everythin'. Cultivate love of self. It's terribly immodest to cop to it, but I was feelin' confessional, so, there ya go . . . . Well, & it's plan A, too . . . . & plan C . . . . & plan Z . .. . . )
& the popularity thing is really weirdly funny. I've, um, never been what I think of as popular, but plenty of people wanna hang out with me. (Well, I am fun. I have fun. I keep me entertained jus' fine . . . . ) & it ends up looking something like popularity. But that desperate thing, huh. See, I think of myself as anti-social. Hermit-y. Having a love-hate relationship with humankind, mostly tolerating them at a distance, where they can be quite lovely & exotically interesting to observe. But interacting with them is, um, problematic. I am socially awkward. I can generally only tolerate having so many close relationships at a time &, in person, I tolerate crowds best with a lot of structure around the interactions. (Now that I articulate this out it occurs to me that that formality is probably part of what appeals to me about friend lists, the codified solidity of it. Social stuff can be so amorphous . . . . . ) So. I don' know . .. . *shrugs*
& especially since I've become out-kinky, not that I'm especially demonstrative around the vanillas, but it is 'popular' to 'be kinky'. I've watched my esteem go up in other's evaluation when they realized I'm a kinky sex freak, lol . . . . .. & I've had enough interaction with enough people to know that certain sub-populations consider BDSM manifestations to be 'cool' . . . . . . Which, for me, ends up being potentially more people to avoid & / or fend off . . ..
There are functional uses for friend lists. Makes it easy to drop them a line . . . .. That's an obvious.
CM is also designed to snoop on others in interesting ways, that whole who-looked-at-my-full-profile thing . . . & the many ways to track when a profile last logged on . . .. . Most social networking sites seem to share some capacity to display & / or observe how a profile has been using the site -- bloggings, message board postings, 'walls', etc, with the 'friend' function playing more or less of a role in that . . .. ..
There are less obvious uses. Particularly here on CM when I look at my gigantonormous friend list it tends to trigger fond thoughts of the different persons . . . .. I'll wonder how they're doing, that kinda thing . . . . Sometimes I'm even moved to send a spontaneous note . . . . . . Over on FetLife, XTUbe & other sites the friend list is tucked away . . . . .
& I guess I'm probably more likely to look at my friend list since I don't see avatars on the boards, mostly. Once in a while I change my settings here on CollarChat to see avatars, but most of the time I view the message boards as text only . . . . . I do look over the friend list on my CM profile to see what pics people have up . . . .
Also, as a bit of a linguistic rebel, this whole phenom gives me renewed chances to use 'friend' as a verb, which both amuses me in a general dynamic-language-user way & in an annoying-the-strict-grammarian-types way . . . . . .
When I first had the DemonKia profile I only friended people I knew in flesh-life, but after I'd hung out on XTube (where I went a little 'friending crazy') I changed my policy . . . . . . & then I started hanging out on the message boards & I friend people I like here when the opportunity presents . . . . .
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