A Public Service

There are certain things in life which spawn disproportionate amounts of debate. I'm not talking about major issues which people discuss at length – spiritual, ethical, political or other. These spawn about the amount of debate you would expect, because they're beefy subjects. I mean little things, things that don't really matter, but which people seem to pour nearly endless amounts of time and energy into discussing. There are of course the obvious examples – 'Who would win out of a fight between a Star Destroyer and the Enterprise?', for instance – but I'm frequently caught out by some of the ridiculous things people get wound up about. I saw a group on Facebook the other day (indeed I received, and ignored, an invitation to join it) entitled 'Give Australia an R18+ Classification for Games!' I particularly like the exclamation point.

While I have some interest in issues of censorship – I wrote to Communications Minister Steven Conroy to state my opinion against the national broadband filter – I find this particular group a little on the self-important side. For instance, one poster informs the group of the following piece of apocalyptic terror:

“This group (myself included) has been sedentary for too long. Now we have something to galvanise us into action... Left 4 Dead 2 has been refused classification... this is a BIG DEAL. Bigger than Dark Sector and Fallout 3. I'll be following this one very closely.”

Surely, nothing is bigger than Fallout 3.

Admittedly there is a good deal of irony in writing about self-importance in a blog post, of all things. But I have good news: I am not going to spend this post railing about people's priorities and selfishness. I have a different intent in mind: public service.

I would like to attempt to shed some light on a topic, also Facebook related, that, though seemingly even more insignificant and futile than the classification of Dark Sector, nonetheless galvanises at least as many people into action, or at least into a restless bickering that has often turned the air of a room or car the colour of red whine. The issue that has resulted in so many calls for a wah-mbulance in the last couple of years? Facebook friends lists.

If you're a facebook user there's a good chance you're nodding in recognition. Most of us have heard some sort of complaint from someone about friends lists. Whether a whinge about people who 'collect' friends, or a lament from someone that they have been 'culled' from another person's list (usually discovered by accident, since the monster that will allow you to post almost any opinion, and read others' opinions about you, is nonetheless tactful enough not to tell you when you are deliberately removed from someone else's list), it's a common enough refrain that most people have heard it. So here is my service: a brief outline of the three main approaches to Facebook friend-making.

Approach Number 1: Friend Collection
This was something that was almost a hobby earlier in Facebook's life, when you could even add applications that would keep track of your friend count and advertise how many people were 'rolling in your crew'. (Try not to laugh at the image of a bunch of white folks sitting at home, slack-jawed faces bathed in white light from their monitors, reading a commercial app that told them how many people rolled in their crew). It's sort of like a popularity contest, but even more artificial and shallow – a gathering which is a mix of genuine friends, passing acquaintances, and a few high-school nerds who were puzzled to receive a friend request from 'that guy', but who accepted because they were too polite (or afraid) to be so rude as to hit Ignore. This meaningless collection of names forms a number (always at least three digits, or you wouldn't be playing) which, presumably, makes the collector feel good about themselves.

Approach Number 2: Friend Connection
This is something which seemed to appear as a reaction to Friend Collection. People began to mercilessly limit their friends-lists to people who they actually count as friends. The popular line is 'I'm not friends with anyone on Facebook who I wouldn't talk to in real life'. The people who follow this belief system are quick with the Ignore button when friend-requests come in from people they don't know or don't like. They also occasional perform a sort of pruning exercise, going through their friends list and removing people from it who shouldn't be there, people who somehow slipped through the net on the initial request, catching the pruner on a generous day, or people who used to be close to the pruner, and have drifted away. People who follow this discipline appear to feel that they are adhering to a purer form of Facebook use, a sort of asceticism, where the brevity of the list and the tightness of the number on their profile page becomes the most important thing, and indicator of their integrity, and a way of setting themselves apart from the collectors.

Approach Number 3: The Glorified Address Book
I know it doesn't rhyme with the other two approaches, and I'm sorry about that. But this is the third approach, and it seems to rest on the philosophy of 'Who cares?'. People who use Facebook in this way are happy to accept a friend request from fairly well anyone, as long as they are fairly sure they can remember where they know the person from. They know that they're being collected or snooped on from time to time, but they're too apathetic to care. People in this group can superficially resemble collectors, because their friends lists can be quite long, but there is a strong chance they don't really know who is in their list, or that they just assume nearly everyone is, because they generally say yes to anyone. There is a certain practicality to this promiscuity, because it makes it easy to get in touch with anyone, anytime; at the same time, these are the people most likely to grow frustrated by knowing so much about so many people they don't really care about but do nothing about it, because it's too much trouble.

I hope that I have defined the argument clearly, for two reasons. Firstly, altruistically, I just like to help. If you've been sitting at home, perhaps curled in a corner, rocking back and forth, wondering what model of friend-interaction you should adopt in your Facebook-keeping, worry no longer. Simply read the descriptions above, and make a selection. If you choose Approach 2, I look forward to being purged from your friends list any day now.

Secondly, and less altruistically (as well as unrealistically), I hope that I have clarified this to a point that is at least close to finality. This is not simply for the fame and publishing offers that will no doubt flow in as a result of my achievement. My motivation is a simpler thing, a thing of fields and farms, milking cows and chewing strands of wheat: basically, I never want to hear another argument about the subject again.

Shameless self-promotion: to read more head to www.room-in-nations.blogspot.com