Friendster’s Subtle Charm Dwindles

So obviously I’m the first person to ever realize the potential of Friendster, its complexity, its sheer volume, its myriad applications. The first. And after a couple days of exploring and, in all honesty, “checking out the prospects,” I’ve come to an arrogant and generalized conclusion: most people on Friendster are really skeezy. Granted, there are exceptions: married folks, people genuinely looking for friends and others who share their interests and activities, and the occasional nice single person looking for a relationship. Perhaps most people are just kinda sleazy and creepy, but I’m not willing to be that cynical. I think Friendster mainly attracts two kinds of people: the skeezy types and the types who dig the idea of a good social networking site. That latter bunch are alright in my book, but I think they’re lost in a sea of dating/cheap sex-hungry creeps. It may also be that the medium encourages people to be snarky, self-possessed, over-cute, and so forth; those little “interests” and “about me” fields aren’t exactly a damn autobiography. So I cut a little slack; stay too long in a pick-up bar and pretty soon you’ll be asking “hey baby, what’s your sign?”

Is this impression of Friendster unique to me? Appropriately enough, a friend of a friend says “Friendster is just another way to A/S/L your way into someone’s pants,” referring to the common question on the notoriously sleazy America Online chatrooms: “Age/Sex/Location?” Not just me, apparently. But in the end, if Friendster gets people together then it’s earned its chaps as a community, and as good social software. Whether it’s the community the site itself fosters or its ugly reflection of “real life” social dynamics that turns me off I’ll not quite be able to pin down. Suffice to say, it’s only out of hope of finding those couple nice, interesting folks that I leave my profile up."