An Ode to Friendster

I don’t normally recommend that people immediately leave my site and go to another one, especially not in the first sentence of an article, but this is an exception: stop what you’re doing and go to Friendster.com right now. It’s the best website, nay, the best service ever to be created in the history of mankind. Why? Because it’s a 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week freak show in which your friends and your friends’ friends are the stars.

For those of you who are not yet on Friendster (both of you), it’s a website that maps out your personal network, i.e. everyone who you know through five degrees of separation or less. You create a profile of yourself, then create links to your friends’ profiles, who have links to their friends’ profiles, and so on and so on. You can just casually peruse through your network linearly, e.g. I go to my friend Nora’s profile and click on her friend Richard and click on his friend Kelly who says in her bio that she’s a die-hard Slayer fan. So now I know that there is someone in my personal network who still listens to Slayer. I would have never guessed.

But that’s boring.

The real beauty of Friendster is the Gallery feature. It’s where you have full access to everyone in your network. In my case I have more than 150,000 people in my network within one to five degrees of separation of the friends I’ve listed. To narrow it down you can search the fields in people’s profiles like where they live, what their interests and hobbies are, what their occupation is, etc.

When I first discovered this feature I was excited to see what kind of interesting people my friends and their friends know. I restricted the Gallery search to people living in the Austin area, then clicked on the first profile that appeared, a guy named Milton. According to the occupation listed on his profile, Milton is a Straight-up Playa'. His interests include "talkin shit to you and your friends" and "keepin it gangsta." And evidently Milton is not alone in my network. A quick search revealed that next time I am in the mood to keep it gangsta, I can join Milton and 186 other friends of friends who have listed this under their interests.

There is also a feature where you can suggest that two people meet each other if you think they'd make a good match. So I could suggest that Xster, who likes "smoking all types of ill shit," meet Josh, who lists his occupation as Rolling Fatty Bluntz. Perhaps I could even meet these people myself! After all, I am only two degrees of separation from both of them. Though I don't need anyone to roll fatty bluntz or smoke ill shit with, they both also list "sleeping" and "eating" under their interests. Though it would never have occurred to me to list bodily functions as interests, at least it's a start.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been, but I was quite surprised to find my network full of people like Milton, Xster, and Josh. After a while it appeared that the collective interests of the people in my network could basically be boiled down to “creepin on hoez,” “Mr. T,” and the “Food Channel.” With a mix of bewilderment and morbid curiosity I continued to search through my network, seeing if there was something so outlandish that nobody I know listed as an interest. I was unsuccessful. In the half day I wasted on this pursuit, here were some of the favorite interests I learned my friends' friends have. These are direct quotes:

What Are People in My Personal Network Interested In?
	"knife fights"
	"boozin it up, collecting pez"
	"trying to talk like i'm one sick ass gangsta by saying, 'holla like a playa!' and typing LiKe diS 2 gEt cHO aTtenShuN"
	"creepin on fools"
	"being a god dam gangsta and bubblebaths and long walks on the beach"
	"getting pissed about stuff, poetry, porn"
	"jewish geography"
	"heroin"
	"big pimpin"
	"bare knuckle boxing"
	"i like to go online......also i like to kick it and shit.... i go clubbin...... and more"
	"making giant cardboard heads"

But more important than the prose of my acquaintances’ bios were their pictures. One of the things that you will quickly realize is that a picture really is worth a thousand words, and this is never more true than on Friendster. Many of the users need not even waste their efforts typing their bios. Their photos speak the loose string of misspelled words and expletives for them. One could guess that PoisonSexy, who chose a photo in which she's wearing a leather bustier that emphasizes the indecipherable tattoo on her chest, lists only "PARTAYing, chillin, porn" under interests. And it's not necessary to read the Relationship Status line to know that the 30-something-year-old man dressed as a robot is "single." The picture of the fat girl kissing her somewhat attractive friend sends the message loud and clear, “I may be obese, but at least I’m bisexual, and that’s hot, right?” And the countless women who post photos of themselves in bikinis that are smaller than an eye patch don’t even need to write the words, “I will do pretty much anything if you’ll just pay attention to me.” [See the Buttafly Guide to Interpreting Friendster Photos.]

About every five minutes you’re on this site you’ll find yourself thinking, “Who the hell is friends with these freaks?” And that, in a nutshell, is the beauty of Friendster. Because the answer is always, “MY friends.”

See Part II