I’m fairly new to Friendster. It’s kind of a cool concept. You invite your friends to sign up, and then they get their friends to sign up, and it progresses on and on like that bad shampoo commercial from the 70s (and so on, and so on, and so on). The idea here is that you can meet new people who aren’t complete strangers, since someone you know knows somebody who knows them.
Well, that’s the concept anyway. But since this site is free (and hardly regulated), it’s open game to pranksters and saboteurs. Which means, not only can you be friends with Albert, Jennifer and Myra, you can also be buddies with the planet Earth, Piss, or even a city like Los Angeles, which, by the way, is apparently a man.
Okay, so everyone’s having a little fun. Where’s the harm? Picture this scenario:
Let’s say a woman named Shelby contacts you and says she’d like to get together for some drinks. So you click on her name to check her out. You know, see what she likes and doesn’t like, stuff like that. That’s when you see it–up there, in the left hand corner of the page–a list of names that tells you just how you’re actually connected to Shelby.
Turns out, your good friend Dana is buddies with Mike who is apparently pretty chummy with Arianna Huffington who is a friend of Shelby’s. In other words, the only connection you have to Shelby is that she and your friend’s friend share the same bad sense of humor.
So, the next time you find yourself thinking about how funny it might be to open up a Friendster account for, say, Steve Jobs or Ginger Lynn, step away from the keyboard and slam your head into the wall until you black out. Fakesters suck.
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