Social Network Dinner Parties

I'm beginning to see a pattern, that most online with hundreds of 'friends' are around for and after shallow friendship. Usually a few comments for a week, a few token gestures, then only a rare comment once a month for a while, often forget to reply and then washed away.

They've got another 20 friends by then and there never was time spent enough to know them like you would with a normal friend who keeps in regular contact.

It reminds me of socialites at dinner parties. Everyone is best friends instantly on introduction and want ways to contact each other and meet up again 'soon'. It's about the mingling, what they can get short-term, not the people.

But they are like butterflies and flit from flower to flower, never settling long enough to know any one well enough to really gain that great bond of shared understanding that friendship becomes with frequent and regular time spent chit-chatting about anything and everything. Finding out about them. Being there for them. Thinking, remembering and doing things to make their day, every so often.

~90% of the friends, they can't remember a few months later! Is it any wonder they get bored and left behind? They haven't tried to maintain any depth. They've spread themselves too thin. No one really cares about them for more than a few months.

It's about the next party, the next meadow. Where to collect shallow, show flowers from; in the hope they might gain popularity. Never to gain something worthwhile. But they'll likely miss the genuine few - the well-known, long term friends that keep bothering about them the same way they need to do for them.

Friends need regular feeding, not harvesting. :)

Comment by Pumpkinology on September 6, 2010 at 1:25am: I stumbled over this post from the front page and I just wanted to say that I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said up there, and I can apply it to so many people I know. That last line, "Friends need regular feeding, not harvesting" couldn't be more true. So thank you for sharing that. :)

Comment by Kobalos on September 6, 2010 at 2:56am: Thanks for reading it all!

Comment by Ghetto Gutter Shock. on September 10, 2010 at 10:00am: Kalos,

Your such a poet.....I love what you said, and I know I am guilty of doing just what your talking about. In fact I even do it, with with the live people in my life.

Might be a social disorder, like none of this really means anything anyway, then I sit around wondering why I am still all alone.

I also feel like the rare breed I need in my life I will never meet and people let me down anyways, just like I let them down too.

I am trying to work on this, and thank you so very much for posting, as it gives me hope to work harder at those connections I need to keep in my life.

I want people in my life that have been in the "gutter", picked themselves up and now are moving on to a professional lifestyle, so in the future they can be mentors and or dooropeners to the youth that is doing the same thing we did.... and we are a rare breed!

Punk Rock 101 : Educate, Infiltrate, Dominate, then Populate..... thats my motto!

Comment by Cpt. Oblivious on September 14, 2010 at 2:40pm: Stumbled onto this from the front page and I now have the sudden urge to delete half the people I'm "friends" with on Facebook.

Comment by Kobalos on September 14, 2010 at 3:16pm: heh Gotta admit Facebook really leads down that path. Everyone wants added before there's any long-standing reason and usually never.bother after again once they are.

My fav. recently is in MMORPG's where someone says like two things to you and then ask: 'Friends?'
XD

Comment by Kaylee Alvy on November 5, 2010 at 12:38am: same as the majority, i stumbled upon this on the front page. you really have a way with words, comparisons, and explanations! i approve and also agree with what was said.

obviously, to me, i like meeting other people and like to be good acquaintances with them, but i like having my close circle of friends.