Social Networking...Thoughts and Observations...

The Internet has brought together literally thousands of people for absolutely no good reason. I speak particularly of websites like Face Book, Twitter, Tagged and MySpace, just to name a few. Now don't get me wrong, many people have found that these pages work to their advantage, sharing pictures and blurbs with family and friends that they actually know and are simply too far a away to make physical visits a frequent reality. I speak of those that add people simply to see how many "friends" or "followers" that can get and when one or two drop off, they spend hours reviewing their lists to see exactly who it is.

I look over Face Book, yes, I'm guilty of having a page there and see people with hundreds of friends on their lists. To what purpose I ask myself, are they adding everyone under the sun that asks? I can see if there is a common interest buried in the reasoning but there should be a limit to what some people should add. For those that follow celebrities and the like, do you really need to know that their dog just did something cute or that they really, really like a local restaurant's mushroom soup?

Is this some cry for help, a deep seated need to be popular due to some missed experience in high school? Turned down for the cheer leading squad, didn't get to play pro ball after high school or simply a "Look at me, look at me" type of thing going on. I am truly unsure as to why people feel the need to add anyone and I do mean ANYONE, to their personal pages.

Twitter is another of my favorites in that you can follow just about anyone you like without them ever knowing you exist. They will send out a brief message letting the world know they ran out of toilet paper and have to run to the store. If they happen to be famous...45 people will reply back that they have a spare roll for them, 63 more of their followers will say they'll run the errand for them and 100+ will re tweet it in case the rest of the world may have missed the post. Tragedy averted with the help of their Tweeps, for sure!

Since the advent of Face Book, you hear very little of MySpace and its millions of users. They have fallen prey to the dreaded "competition of websites" on the Internet. They of course, don't have Farmville, Mafia Wars or Zynga, which obviously were the main causes of death for the one of the pioneers in social networking sites.

These websites seem to have found their niche in our society, bringing millions of people together that may have otherwise never met. But have they actually met yet? If the additions are simply names and pictures on a website, how much do you actually know about those that you add?

That picture of the hot girl in the low cut top could just as well be a 55 year old man who thinks it is funny as hell you are coming on to a pic he ripped off the net from his favorite porn site. The 15 year old boy on your daughters page could be a 35 year old registered sex offender ripping his Internet service from a local Burger King. The anonymity of the Internet allows many people to toy with others for whatever reasons they may come up with, which is usually a deep seated need to make themselves feel better due to serious low self-esteem issues.

A friendly reminder from your ever watchful neighborhood Lemur. Add those you know or at least, know of. You never know what you may be getting yourself into. Until next time...