It all starts innocently enough.
An e-mail sent by an acquaintance that reads: “Invitation to Join Friendster.” But it is only a week or two before that innocuous-sounding subject line has you hooked on the best fad to come out of the Internet since the pairing of the colon and end parenthesis. As Spin magazine recently put it, “Friendster is more addictive than crack.”
For those of you who have been living in a black hole the past few months, Friendster is a Web site. Its home page describes it as “an online community that connects people through networks of friends for dating or making new friends. Create your own personal and private community, where you can interact with people who are connected to you through networks of mutual friends.”
Yes, I realize it sounds like a cheesy dating service, and I suppose it could be if that’s what you’re looking for. But for most people, Friendster is part message board, part popularity contest. It’s like fantasy football, except it’s for hipsters. To join, you are either invited by a friend or sign yourself up. Then you fill out a profile, consisting of your age, location, occupation, interests, favorite books, movies, music, whether you’re interested in meeting people for dating, looking for activity partners or “just here to help.” Then, you begin collecting friends and writing testimonials.
When I joined last July I had no idea what to make of the whole thing. At first, it felt like I was part of some secret cult. Then, I discovered that half of the people I knew were already members. They all had the witty profiles filled with obscure rock references, self-deprecating humor and listings of “Donnie Darko” as their favorite movie.
Oh, the hours I spent perfecting my profile. I labored over every word, asking myself “Does my liking Joy Division make me more attractive?” and “Will people think I’m a hippie if I say that ‘On the Road’ is my favorite book?” A big part of Friendster is proving, through the profile or testimonials, just how clever you are to everyone else.
Every time I got on the Internet I was tempted to check my account. My heart would leap every time I got an e-mail announcing that my friend request had been accepted or that I had a new testimonial to approve.
Even though I haven’t met anyone new because of Friendster, I have been able to view my old friends in a different light. I now know that some of them are really bad spellers, and that I’m not alone in my love of the movie “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.”
In the beginning, I thought Friendster was the kind of thing that couldn’t be talked about in public places — that it was only meant to be discussed in hushed tones with no one around. However, the addiction soon got the best of everyone, and by September I couldn’t get through a conversation without someone bringing it up.
The power of Friendster became so great that a whole new way of communication between us developed. As people scrambled to outdo each other, a hybrid language, based on who could use the least vowels and who would be the first to quote OutKast, was created.
The buzz surrounding Friendster has died down since the school year began. I’m already friendsters with most people I know, and I’ve run out of ways to tell them, in testimonial form, how great I think they are. However, I still check my account almost daily, just in case there’s a party I need to know about, to see if someone new joined and, also, because despite its shallow exterior, I <3 Friendster.