The Purge

In the spirit of the fact that this is the VERY FIRST May in four years that "finals" have not even crossed my mind (with due apology to the grad bloggers, Kristiface, Midge and Lilly - good luck! Although a bit late I think) and that this is the completion of my first year out of college, I thought I would do something sort of drastic.

Given the fact that Facebook has turned into a popularity contest, I remember back in my senior year of college - as Fordham got on the network in my junior year - everyone asking everyone else if they were on Facebook and can I add you as my friend? Regardless of the fact that sometimes we knew one another for less than 5 minutes, at times it does prove to be useful, especially when the two people were in the same class; most us us checked out Facebook more than our email accounts, frankly.

One way you could easily tell who was a commuter and who was a resident was the number of Facebook friends you had. The divide was about 50/50 but the down-low was that residents usually had more friends since they lived on campus, and the commuters (like myself) still lived at home or had lives that included pre-college and not Fordham. That is the case simply put; there are exceptions to the rule (like those who joined a million clubs, but that was always the same group of people, the 408 clique) and of course this is not the hard-and-fast one but more a general perception. It also depended on the person and more the age; I was a junior when Facebook came so the freshman who had it from the summer before (like my sister once she got her Fordham email) had 100 friends even before orientation.

But tonight I decided to take stock. It has been a year since I graduated college and do I still speak to all 87 of my Fordham people? More specifically, who do I really speak with? Most people were "facebooked" by association or mild acquaintaince - really it is a popularity contest. So I trimmed down to now 35 people: those who I speak with, hang out with and have strong acquaintances with. as for my "Other networks" I kept the kids I grew up with, the kids from high school that I still speak with on occasion/SOAS friends and people outside all that that I still have strong associations with. Everyone else, out. No harm intentions - just that I barely spoke to you in high school/college and not that I am going to speak with you now via Facebook.

Facebook is still pretty useful, now that those within my college circle either got real jobs in the NYC area that track internet time or in another country (within my group, 3 of us ended up in different countries - Korea, Japan and Argentina - long term, one is in the Army and another in California). It enables us to have conversation on our walls - which are public but only used for regular stuff. Case in point: one of my Fordham friends is coming to Japan and she is going to visit me and we pretty much arranged everything via Facebook since it is one of the most convenient ways for us to communicate. She is coming the weekend of June 2/3 and I am really excited.