Friending

Social media invites "friends". I always thought a friend was the person you could trust, someone who saw you before you brushed your teeth and hair, without make-up and in your old teeshirts and didn't scowl. You could tell your friend all of your deepest, darkest secrets, hopes and dreams and your friend would never laugh at them or give you advice on what and what not to do about them. When someone said to me, "I went to your Facebook and you haven't any friends, I was surprised. Don't you 'friend' people?"  I answered, "What's that?" He explained how easy it was, and that he had dozens and dozens of friends. "Wow, that must be hard to keep up with. All that tea and idle gossip." There was laughter. "Oh silly, not that kind of friend, just Facebook friends." "What's that," I repeated, whereupon I was given a lesson in obtaining large numbers of "friends". I went to my rather thin and friendless Facebook page that somehow I have never been able to manage, the one with old photos of some years back, that lurk beyond my removal attempts. Recalling my true friend's lessons, I explored my friend possibilities and saw that I could instantly opt for any number, nay hundreds, of friends. All I had to do, was try to friend them which is kind of like speed dating. You have to be polite and ask first if they will friend you, and if they do, you have just gained a friend. In fact you not only have them but another batch of possible friends in their friends. There are pictures of these potential friends. I spent most of the rest of the day, going through the list and was astounded at the vast array of possibilities. Wait a minute, I thought, this is something that takes consideration. You have to gaze carefully at the prospects and try to read their photos and if you're lucky, their qualifications. You don't want to get a so-called rotten tomato who might be a chainsaw murderer or pedophile or spy. I began to eliminate all but the best candidates. Some were too much of that and not enough of this, and finally I narrowed it down to around fifty. It was exhausting and time consuming. I felt also somewhat intimidated due to the fact that my true friend boasted of a few hundred friends. It didn't seem to tire him. At the same time, I learned that when I did acquire a friend, it meant that his or her friends were allowed in my Facebook door and suddenly without filters, became possible friends. Friends of friends so to speak. With that in mind, the job of investigation began. My true friend advised me to Google my choices before actually hitting the friend button on my computer.  That took around a week, because by this time, I was becoming somewhat nervous about the whole matter of friendship, cyber style. Some of the photos of my erstwhile candidate friends were less than decent and I considered that any of my friends must be made of a degree of moral fibre but I won't get into that. I also learned that it was entirely possible to manipulate through various other means, faces and places using digital calisthenics available to those who were adept at that sort of thing. My face could thus be manipulated into that of a dog or pig or worse, a horse. It is long enough as it is. In the end, I felt exhausted and informed my true friend that I made a firm decision to remain among the only and lonely friendless in the computer world. It is much safer, worry free and no work at all.