Posted
by Joel Mathis
November 27, 2007 at 2:24 p.m.
Howard Kurtz is my friend
An update on my [Facebook experience:][1]Today, I made Howard Kurtz my friend. I've never met him in my life, nor am I likely to. What's more, the extent of our lifetime communication is likely to be this: I made a friend request. Five minutes later, he accepted.He became one of 43 friends to me. I became one of 1,010 friends to him. I suspect I will get lost in the shuffle.So why did I make him my friend? Well, he's the media reporter for the Washington Post. He has a show dissecting media trends on CNN. I pay attention to his work ... so I wanted to be his friend. Pathetic, really.And I'm kind of worried, because - as my miniscule 43 friends demonstrates -- I've not been using Facebook to rack up the number of random strangers I can make contact with. I've "ignored" friend requests from people I've never met, or who I've met but barely know. Some people I know and don't like that much, but I've accepted their friend requests because to do otherwise would seem rude somehow.Making Howard Kurtz my friend, though, possibly changes everything. I've lowered the barrier to "friend"ship, to people ... who aren't in any conceivable way my friends.Do I have to let everybody in now? And if so, is Facebook still useful to me?A little help? [1]: http://www.lawrence.com/blogs/mathis/2007/oct/16/facebook/
and 6 others
Comments
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chewyfally (Falestine Afani Ruzik) says…
*sigh*
welcome to the club.
punch is in the back.
DOTDOT (anonymous) says…
There is a person I'm married to whose name I won't mention who checks her myface every 3-4 weeks. So one of her old high school buds sent a friend request and she didn't respond right away which triggered a meeting over lunch between that person and another person with that person wondering if the unnamed person was mad at that person. So this technology enables people you haven't talked to for twenty years to get their feelings hurt at the speed of light.
Forget the club, I'll just make my way around back and steal some punch.
JohnB (anonymous) says…
I must be doing something wrong. I have yet to get Facebook friend requests from people I don't know.
Even in the blogosphere, I am an anchorite.
godjilla (Jill Ensley) says…
I tend to use Facebook as a "yes, I know you" sort of social network and MySpace as a "yes, I might know you, or maybe I want to know you, or at least know what you're up to" sort of thing.
I don't know. MySpace seems more shallow that way.
jochan (Jocelyn Craft) says…
I use Facebook as a "I know you, or I used to know you" place. I've accepted friend requests from folks who were obviously just looking up their old high school buddies and recognized my name. I barely remember some of those folks, but if I do, I accept them.
It has something to do with not being able to say "no, I didn't like you at all when I knew you. You were so [adjective] you couldn't accept that I was [different adjective]."
But anyway: having a contact you admire, or whose work you follow? Not so bad. Not like accepting "Hi, my name is Gary, I like your style, we should chat sometime". (I think my 'style' is that I'm female and on Facebook. That might be your 'problem', JohnB. Just sayin'.)
ihatejohntravolta (anonymous) says…
i probably only have five friends (and maybe five more people who were decent to me) in high school. i'm friends with all of them and this has led to me getting friend requests from a crap ton of people in high school that i a) didn't know or b) were completely tortured by. i don't get it. at first i started accepting them as my friends thinking that they were trying to make amends. then i would delete them after a while when there wasn't any sort of contact made. now i just outright reject those requests (and i have gotten some funny/nasty notes about it too!). i may sound bitter but seriously most people can read my profile-- why would you want to be my friend if you don't know me or were incredibly mean to me at some point in my life? AND why would you expect me to want to become your friend?
facebook, UGH.
monkeywrench (Tim vonHolten) says…
i don't know why this blog compelled me to join facebook. morbid curiosity, i suppose. what i'm finding is that no one i went to any school with has the internet. which doesn't surprise me considering the quality of the schools i attended. anyway, it's fun to get snarky comments from people i see most days anyway. i guess.
OnShakedown (Chris Tackett) says…
read this: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/26/...
OnShakedown (Chris Tackett) says…
that link discusses something a few of you already brought up. That there is a sort of guilt that can come for some when you don't know if you should accept a friend invite from someone you don't really know or care about. Ol Doctorow thinks that will bring down the popularity of the site. I tend to agree. I have a handful of friend adds that I keep stagnant because I don't want to add them and don't want to ignore it bc they would be able to see that I didn't accept it. If i keep it 'pending' they can't complain. I'm just lazy! :)
Eventually when all your coworkers are on it, it becomes a lot less fun.
Joel (Joel Mathis) says…
So Chris: Howard Kurtz doesn't really want to be my friend?
Actually, I'll say this: Facebook does a pretty good job of letting you decide how much your "friends" can see of you and how much you have to see of your friends. I've got some people on my list -- not any of you, of course! -- that are on my list of people I don't want to see updates about. And I've got a list of people who don't necessarily see everything I put out, either.
But I'm occasionally willing to risk social awkwardness.
chewyfally (Falestine Afani Ruzik) says…
My mother-in-law is on facebook. We have an unspoken understanding that we do NOT add each other as friends.....
Joel (Joel Mathis) says…
Fally: OK if I become friends with your mother in law? I'll be she's cool.
chewyfally (Falestine Afani Ruzik) says…
Haha, yeah actually she's really cool. But if you become friends with her on facebook, she just might squeeze your tushie.
Joel (Joel Mathis) says…
Really? Done deal then!
DOTDOT (anonymous) says…
I don't see myface in my future because:
A) High School was a blur
B) College was scattered across time and space, and
C) I aim to protect my carefully cultivated anonymity based cowardice and resulting lack of google juice
rmccull (anonymous) says…
I read and like Kurtz's work, but must confess to feeling a bit uneasy about him being employed as a media reporter by both The Washington Post and CNN. If it's not a direct conflict of interest, it sure smells like one. Is he really going to give us the straight dope on either place or would he feel the need to pull his punches?
I'm sure he's aware of this line of thinking and has a readymade response to it.
He always has a book out. If he ever came to Lawrence or KC to promote it, I'd be there.
Joel (Joel Mathis) says…
I think he's pretty regularly criticized for that, in fact. Sometimes the stuff he does is real interesting: He pretty much broke the Jayson Blair scandal, and after it became clear there were no WMD in Iraq he was the guy who went back and did a huge report on WaPo's reporting oversights in the runup to the war. And his weekly online chats are pretty cool, for the most part. But sometimes - mainly when he's profiling TV people -- his work feels superficial. His latest book is about the TV network wars, and I'm not really interested in reading it.
OnShakedown (Chris Tackett) says…
Joel,
I didn't say that, but I did think it. :) Ha, i know it sounds silly to say. I don't think people really read much into the 'friends' label, anyhow. i imagine you know this, but i'll say it anyway, he is just being a smart media figure and just as he would like to add a few hundred new readers to his blog or column or a few more thousand to his TV audience, he wants to increase his online readership and facebook is the new landscape. The cap is 5,000 "friends", so he has a long way to go. Once he reaches that cap, then I bet he will start being more careful about who he adds. If he gets an invite from a real friend or colleague at that point, I bet he'll for sure go through the list and purge the people he doesn't know. And they might be named Mathis! AHHHH! :)
Dazie (Aileen Dingus) says…
My son is on facebook, as am I. We're on each other's lists, and he is eternally mortified that some of his friends have added me to their lists.
However, we have a tacit agreement to avoid each other on myspace. *shrug* I have no idea why- I don't do anything there but post pictures that my friends in far places can see.
I try to avoid being "friends" with anyone who has a friends list that numbers in the hundreds. I have two exceptions- a film company out of KC that does historical stuff and a band I like out of Austin. It's a good way to get news.