The Social Networking Effect

I read somewhere recently that attendance for high school reunions is starting to dip significantly. Somewhere to the tune of 40% down from the previous average. Event planners seem to believe that the decline can be linked to the emergence of popular social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, though to be fair, no one on MySpace is old enough to qualify for a high school reunion. I find this statistic very interesting because it confirms a suspicion of mine that I’ve had for quite a while now: People suck.

I myself have been part of an increasingly sedentary lifestyle for several years now all predicated on the fact that most people aren’t worth the time and energy it takes to develop and sustain meaningful ties. Need proof? Take this quick pop quiz and see if you qualify.

Q: When it comes to reality TV, I __________

A). keep up with the Kardasians
B). enjoy the spunky competitive nature of Survivor, The Biggest Loser, or The Bachelor
C). like to deploy a little Kell on Earth
D). watch TLC and have decided whether I’m Team John or Team Kate

If you answered A, B, C, or D to the question above, I hate to break it to you, but you are the enemy. It doesn’t mean that we can’t be friends, it just means that I will inevitably piss you off at some point because I don’t care and will feign attention when you attempt to tell me why this week’s episode of Pit Boss was the most epic one yet.


Am I an asshole because of my line of thinking? Probably, but I’d like to go back to the statistic above once again regarding high school reunion attendance. Those numbers don’t lie. They prove that I am not alone in my thinking. How can I be so sure? Think about your Facebook account for a moment. You know you’ve got one. Now, think of the last friend you either sought out on your own, or that found you. Did you exchange the initial “Hey so and so, it’s so great to find you! How’ve you been” private message? Was that the last time you corresponded? Maybe you thought you’d totally keep in touch, but now the only correspondence you get is when they either need three nails and a horseshoe for their stable, or they took the ultimate 80s movie quiz and missed the one about Back to the Future. Admit it, when you saw that, you wondered what the point was of connecting on Facebook in the first place?

Luckily for you, I have the answer. It’s because deep down we all remember what it was like to have so many friends in our youth, but as we’ve gotten older and developed our personalities, only a select few people can match up to our quality threshold. These are the people that become our best friends and significant others and once we have established them, do we really need anyone else? But like most people, you’ll always wonder whatever happened to so and so, you just wouldn’t put your close friends on hold for a night on the town with friends from the past. If you believe you would, then congratulations because you’re part of the 60% of people that still attend reunions. For the rest of us, we enjoy seeing what you look like now, how you ended up in life and will even interject the occasional witty barb in response to your status update, but otherwise we’ve had our fill of you and love the ability to keep tabs on you without being forced into awkward sessions at a coffee house. I am guilty of this myself. I will accept friendship requests from people I haven’t seen for over 20 years, but only because Facebook allows me to keep them at an arm’s length where ultimately conversation is optional. No high school reunion could ever offer me that.