Written by Chuck Rubin Oct. 8, 2008

Facebook: What I have learned from the Internet’s networking capabilities.

I must be the last person to join Facebook. I opened my profile about a month ago and was immediately deluged with “friend” requests from people I had not seen or spoken to in many years. Within a week I had nearly fifty “friends” and the rush of being popular was seductive. I began to download family photos, to update my status on a daily basis, and to “request” friends from the farthest corners of the net. At first blush, it was fun to see people who I last had contact with in high school. It was also great to look up old girl friends, and other people who I was mildly interested in comparing who ended up better off.

In the space of five short weeks I have accumulated 90 “friends” under my profile. Who knew I had that many people in my life that cared about being in touch with me. My mother was right! I did turn into a beautiful swan that people love. But wait, is there more to this analysis? Let’s take a look. Within the “90” there are actually only 20 people I enjoy staying in touch with. Within the “20”, there are maybe, 9 people I really care about, 4 of whom I can actually dedicate time to and one of those is my wife. That leaves me with 3 day-in day-out friends. Expressed mathematically, only 2.5% of the people that I have connected to on Facebook are real “friends.” The other 97.5% are just people I know or have known.

And now the thrill of Facebook wears off. The truth is that there is a reason I lost touch with most of my newly reconnected friends on Facebook. We have nothing in common. I don’t keep in close touch with best friend from high school because he has spent the last ten years alternatively living in Africa or San Francisco with a serious substance abuse issue and a series of illegitimate children. Beyond hearing his story, there is no real chance we are going to rekindle a friendship. We just have nothing in common. I don’t spend any of my time with my lost buddies from college because they have moved to Colorado, or New Mexico, or Seattle and they are all busy working on their lives. Our old bonds of three on three basketball, Mt. Washington camping trips, and rent, are long gone. Beyond the nostalgia, there is little to keep us in contact.

So what is the overall value of Facebook? Clearly there must be something to it, as there are 150 million profiles on record. It can’t be pure voyeurism for everyone? Right? Here is my theory. It’s all ego. My stated reason for spending time on Facebook is “catching up with old friends and networking.” The seedy truth is that I invest time into Facebook because I want people to think that I am cool, funny, and successful. More specifically, I want people who once knew me: girls that wouldn’t give me the time of day, guys I was friends with but always maintained an underlying sense of competition with, to know that I turned out alright and that they should rue the day they passed me up. How petty is that? Very petty.

In an effort to cease activities that are born of narcissistic wants, I have shut down my Facebook account. I am going to stop spending time trying to think of really clever or deep, or funny “what am I doing now” quotations. I am going to say goodbye for now, to the 80 people in my friends folder that I really don’t need to spend time thinking about. I am going to stop searching the “my pictures” file for photos that make me look erudite and youthful (I don’t have any and that depresses me). Instead I am going to call, my best friend since nursery school, take my wife out to dinner, and send an e-mail to my buddy from Italy. They know that I never read Finnegan’s Wake, I haven’t conquered the world, and my hair line is receding. They know the truth about how cool, funny and successful I really am and they are still my friends. They are good for my ego.