"You are connected to 1,871,428 people in your Personal
Network, through 238 friends."
Highest ID number in the New People display: John Kenneth (3986456)
* 0.93 = 3,707,404
Percentage of total friendsterspace covered by personal network:
50%
When "cyborgs", the 21st century definition of the human soul in an
online context begin wanting a destiny and, more important, want to
make the decisions that will create their destinies, the desire to
be held or kissed or loved is not only one of them... And that is
what being human is about..or rather the dark side of it-
anonymous.
" I spent one and a half hours on
Friendster after work, I'm up to over 1.8 million people in my
network. I'm wasting my time on this stupid thing, collecting
people like trading cards, racking up my network counts like
pinball scores. This is actually kind of disturbing: a horror-house
hall-of-mirrors version of my own striving too hard to be
everybody's friend, to make myself a part of the biggest network
possible, so I don't have to feel unloved and alone. How
pathetic..But eventually i ended up feeling the same way when none
reponded to my inbox....Neither did i get over my social
anxiety."
"24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week freak show...Friendster is PLAYED
like a Saturday night Temptation Island episode..but believe me u
are better off than covering your tracks or deleting your photo cos
someone there u didnt want at your doorstep again is on the
goddamed network linked to your best fren who knows every freakin
secret in your closet"
"Satan & his network just went high tech"
"God, believe this...they pulled the Friendsters Anonymous profile
again.
Dammit most of us who were members started linked to each other,
there's anonymity on the net or so they say?!?..The next thing i
would see is someone stalking my dog in my neighbourhood"
"1 profile made"
26 friends chosen to to be connected
12 days to network 4000 people
They thought it was a game. They had no idea how far it would
go..."
"Man's desire to be known, to be expressed , to be accepted results
in his identity lost...What started off as innocent truthful
expression.... opens up a an entire surveillance network...using a
common person.......its not paranoia if they are really after
u..."
"One side of me loves this stuff. After all, the Internet was meant
to connect us all. But I'm also concerned that we're heading to a
world of surveillance, not just on the part of governments or even
corporations, but widespread peer-to-peer surveillance. And I
wonder whether we devalue our relationships by turning them into
data points -- Friendster in my opinion is a contradiction."
A single site where every user can be traced according to their
acquaintances? Quite a boon for those who see security and
surveillance as going hand in hand. How many people connect YOU to
Bin Laden? How many people separate you from the next Unibomber?
Two years ago, this information would have been exceedingly hard to
come by. Today, anyone could easily find the answer (assuming Bin
Laden is a member of Friendster). Breaking up a student group
planning to protest the next G4 summit becomes as easy as
connecting the dots. Everyone implicates themselves by simply
accepting others as friends.
