I discovered Friendster.com while overhearing a cryptic conversation during one of countless reconnaissance missions. I didn’t understand at first. What’s a Friendster? I had just given walking papers to a boyfriend of 3.5 years and I was a train wreck. Little did I know that this socially sanctioned conglomerate of personal ads and shameless self-promotion, along with its cooler, hipper, technically more proficient competitor, MySpace.com, would serve to derail me time after time, usually in the wee small hours, and never when there was a box of tissue around. What was probably intended by their mad-genius creators as an online party of sorts (bring your own whatever, y’all), has been for me a source of torture, albeit masochistic. Yes, I see my own wreck and I can’t look away.
So you sign up at these Web sites, and essentially they provide all of the transparent technical tools for you to build your own page and attract/collect people. You can be as clever, obscene, sexy, dark, or whatever you wanna be–and want people to think you are. Reinvent yourself. Create magnificent lies. Post porn star pix and pretend they’re of you, or play the porn star and go as bare as you dare in jpegs of your own. Friendster and MySpace are two of the few places in the world where identity theft is not only accepted, but expected. You wanna be Keith Richards? Pinch a photo from somewhere, upload it to your page, and make up some Keith Richardsy shit for your profile. There are currently nine Keith Richardses on Friendster (most who won’t let anyone outside of their personal network view their profiles) and four on MySpace, two of which are the Rolling Stones guitarist (yeah, right), while the other two seem to be actual guys named Keith Richards. I count rockstarz Peter Murphy, Pleasure Club, Share from Bubble, and Jeremy from The Blessings among my Friendsters, but who among them could I call at three fucking a.m. to talk me down from the ledge? Furthermore, I’m thinkin’ that Mr. Murphy might be fakin’ it. Not that I care; I play along. I’m a good sport, and it’s all in good fun. Sort of.
So I started out on Friendster, but migrated to MySpace, where it’s much easier to move ahead in the frivolous pursuit of people acquisitions, as Friendster is far more uptight about the way one goes about soliciting new, uh, friends. Just this moment I paid a visit to Friendster–my first in ages–and while the site runs way faster than it used to, the photos still don’t load. Soooooo annoying. Anyway, it’s long been over. It’s all about MySpace now. The blogs. The instant messaging. The “clubs” you can form. Best/worst of all, the comments: barely veiled innuendos, inside jokes, and covert references, most of the wink-wink-nudge-nudge variety devised to imply you-know-what.
Whether Friendster or MySpace–choose your weapon of mass social construction–what’s so terrible about any of this? Well, nothing, really, until arriving at some private realizations that can bum you out or flip you out, depending on your emo status and the hour of your heightened self-awareness.
Realization: these sites make it pretty damn easy to discreetly check in on certain people if one is so inclined. And this one is. Ignorance may be bliss, my Friendsters, but it’s still ignorance. Knowledge, however dagger-sharp, is power alpha and omega. Besides, I have a dangerous curiosity, and even though I’m not an animal of the feline variety, said curiosity has killed me many more times than once. Or rather, I have impaled myself upon it, knowing full well that as I look up certain Web pages via names or email addresses or picture links of mutual “friends” or “friends of friends” or “friends of friends of friends,” there would be an excellent chance that by pointing and clicking, I would be committing emotional suicide upon gleaning the information therein. Apparently I have countless more lives than cats, as well. As a clinically codependent creature, I am, of course, far more interested in what’s going on with other people’s Web sites than my own. For the most part, my real adventures exist in physical space, rather than on MySpace, anyway. (Believe it or not, I actually go out into the world and interact with people, rather than do this glorified, bastardized, barely disguised Internet dating thing for hipsters.)
But if you’re gonna be indulgently self-destructive enough to pine for someone, MySpace is the place. If your elusive (and illusive) certain someone(s) has his face on MySpace, you can find him if you know his email address (or more accurately, the one he registered with on the site) or name (though if he uses a clever screen name as his identity, you’re SOL). Sometimes you have to be patient in your investigation, too. There are seven space holders with my name. There are 427 with the name of, uh, someone. I spent an absurd amount of time sifting through those 427 to hit pay dirt, but I did it. And then I added him to my “Favourites” so I could secretly clock him when I was feeling particularly self-torturous.
Before I let myself click the link, I light a cigarette with a tense hand, and my heart speeds with an adrenaline O.D. as the page loads. I see when last he logged in (11 p.m. on a Saturday night. Cool. That means he was dateless and shagless–presumably–and wasn’t at Ozzfest), new pictures he’s added (sigh), changes he’s made to his profile (his status remains single, but what’s up with the cryptic new headline?), and “friends” he’s acquired (they all seem to be scantily clad and overtly sexual in their presentations) and eliminated (the number has dropped considerably in the last month. Is he deleting them, or are they deleting themselves? The gears of deductive reasoning grind in my head. Did he fuck them and then fuck them over? Did budding romances die on the vine? Did they figure out that he’s a potential psychopath and definite weirdo?). At this point, I actually have more “friends” than he does. My profile has been viewed 402 times–a gain of four since yesterday. Hey, it’s better than the Dow and NASDAQ are doing. I wonder if any of them were him. And I wonder how many views his profile has received. I try to gauge how many of those views were mine, and it’s unfathomable.
Realization: The real spinout is when I invade his Space, and that animated green and orange indicator, “Online Now,” flashes at me, inviting me, taunting me, mocking me. Usually I am on the phone at the time–one of the rudest forms of multi-tasking, mind you–so whomever I’m talking to discovers that I’m otherwise occupied and maddeningly distracted, and gets to experience the joy of one of my 14-year-old-girl freak-outs. For some inexplicable reason, my considerable pair of cajones fails me, my bravado collapses. It’s the cyber equivalent to seeing him at a club or grocery store; I vibrate with the unmistakable pressure of ye olde carpe opportunem. Mindful of this atypical unhingement, my phone friend is too considerate (or too scared) to say, “Either send him an instant message, or shut the fuck up.” Eventually I just shut the fuck up.
Realization: Yeah, there is something unsettlingly voyeuristic about the whole thing–but I have never pretended to not look in people’s windows as I walk by their houses, especially if the rooms or the lighting are intriguing. And when it comes to someone in whom I am emotionally vested... well, I am unequivocally unabashed and unapologetic about my reconnaissance missions. I’m naughty and guiltless about being naughty; I like to know stuff. Plus, no one can hear you cry in Space.
Realization: I haven’t felt this unpopular since, well, ever. All of the pretty people spewing accolades all over each other in their “Comments” sections. And why is it that they’re all so damn fashion model photogenic? It’s like a high school year book, only everyone can read everyone’s shit. It’s a license to ass-kiss, and it’s all so self-serving. How does someone get 2658 “friends”? How does someone get 1064 comments? In the popularity contest of MySpace and Friendster, I’m the outsider.
I’m sure no one notices my absence anyway; I accumulated all of, like, 12 “friends” on the fucking thing. And where are they on a dateless, loveless, shagless Saturday night? On dates, in love, and shagging maniacally, most likely. Hookups courtesy of Fuxster?
I curse these (tangled) Web sites–they’ve contributed to my phobia of weekends. I may be swandiving into the bloody maw every time I dig out a tired pair of drink tickets or immerse in the loudness of a rock 'n' roll circus, but at least I ain’t cruising these cyberspace Shitster destinations, desperately seeking Susan. Or whoever the fuck. I actually have a life, and I’m living it in the real world, baby. Besides, I am much better looking in person.
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