What makes you a Facebook friend?

[Joshua]

I have a problem with facebook and I hate it so much.

I have a few friends on Facebook and I use it daily out of habit and just trying to fill in the gaps in my life.

This is more of an observation than a question and I am interested to hear some constructive feedback from other people.

I have found that there are certain people who treat facebook friends as statistics and indicators of their supposed popularity. When I was at university I noticed how quickly everyone you meet is now on your friends list and have 200 friends. I have found that when I have a friend I consider that to be a pretty big thing. I consider a friend to be a very important person to myself and I value and respect that person highly. Now when I add someone as a friend I would classify them in my books as a genuine friend even if I am only an acquantance or do not know them and have only connected in the hope that a friendship may flourish from an online connection.

I think that my situation is probably circumstantial and there are probably many people experiencing the same thing with social networking. Social networks exist for people to get to know each other to meet and to in general enhance the quality of a user's social experience. However I have found that there are people who do not embrace the meaning of friendship with as much value as I do and this has lead to some pretty disappointing and frustrating experiences online.

Now I have been everywhere on the net and I use personal sites and social networking. I have found that personal sites are 99.9% of the time useless and I have not met a single person that fits my critique of desirable traits or even qualifies as interesting and this is frustrating when there is money involved. I have used facebook since the beginning and have left the site several times because I am not getting the attention I need from my 'friends' - however I have learnt to accept that I am not going to have close friends all the time. I guess that I stay on facebook for information and to be connected with friends, family and to most importantly meet and become friends with people.

Now I suppose that my whole point for writing this ?Question? is to discuss the point that I have been connected with people and have found that they add me as a friend and then if I have the guts to ask them out or just try to communicate I get the cold shoulder and have even been approached by other people asking me to 'stop' - and this I find really offensive as a simple and considerate yes/no is so easy and also adding someone as a friend has huge obligations and responsibilities involved and if I don't ask someone out or to hang out and try to get to know someone better I am not fulfilling my obligations to that person let alone myself.

So now that I have spilled my proverbial guts I am interested to hear of any similar experiences or interpretations of these attitudes towards friendship and social media.

Is it too much to expect to be treated as a human being on the internet?

I value my friends and I am very grateful for the opportunity to meet new people on the internet - why is it so hard to meet new people when I try so hard?

[Peter]

TLDR

[Brandon N]

First, I applaud your writing and your observations.
You are correct. The majority of facebook users try to 'friend' as many as possible.
The whole idea--the more friends, the more popular you appear.
I have about 150 friends--all of whom I know. College/High School/Business friends.
The internet is more of a way to circulate economical funds, really. Yeah we use facebook and it's free. But the computer costs. The connection costs. The parts/labor costs. It's all about money. Advertising, selling trading creating. Sorry, friend. You will probably see lesser and lesser human acknowledgment as time progresses.