chapter three: they preferred to remain anonymous

statement of purpose:
although friending people on facebook is arbitrary, the individual facebook page is personal and immediately relevant to its owner. the arbitrarity of interactions on the internet overcomes and eventually squashes any personal relevance which an individual's facebook page might contain. (eventually, you realize that nobody cares that you liked the beatles as a child. they never read the about me paragraph you've stitched together like frankenstein's monster. they just want to write on your wall and look at your pictures and get your phone number to have but never call.) this is the direct antithesis of healthy friendships in the world of mass and volume, which rely on the intimate, interpersonal exchanges which facebook can neither facilitate nor simulate.

hypothesis:
facebook has diluted the meaning of the word "friendship" to such an extent that I can friend everybody with a last name beginning with the letter "A."

procedure:
I began by searching for (in quotes) " A," notice the space before the "A." this would separate everybody with first names that began with "A" from the people I wanted to friend. I made exceptions for people with names like "D'Angelo," or "Van Adler." I friended them too, because they would probably appear on a list of people with last names beginning with the letter "A," which is exactly what I wanted.

I added a lot of Arnold's, Arsenault's and Abbot's. I added a few people with the name "Aa Aa," alhtough I figured this wasn't their real names, but that they preferred to remain anonymous. I friended them because I didn't want to start making exceptions to the rule.

One lady I friended asked me, "hey what's up? :)," to which I replied, "Hi! Not much." then she wrote, "do i know you by any chance?", to which I replied, "I'm afraid not, I'm just friending everybody with a last name beginning with the letter 'A.'" she promptly unfriended me.

four days into the experiment, I got a message while friending people, which informed me that if I kept on like this, my account would be banned. all other friends I'd add would have to verify that we are friends. this was either a challenge to or the end of my career in the field of social commentary.

conclusion:
this is only a little bit poetic.