Facebook Friends

Unlike a lot of people on Facebook, I run a lean friends list.  How lean?  It's only 78 people.  It isn't a grand number.  In terms of Facebook friends, it's actually quite small.  This is mostly due to the fact that I do not actively go out and search for friends, either by searching my past for people I knew, or by combing through the vast list of people that Facebook recommends that I could possibly be friends with.  There are a number of reasons for that.

The biggest reason why I don't search for friends comes from my current friends list.  I have a lot of friends on that list who have befriended a lot of people... A LOT of people.  In all fairness, they are more popular than me, and some of that is work related (both the popularity and the number of friends).  But the end result of that my suggested friends list tends to have a gigantic number of people on it, most of who I do not even know.  Because of the number, and the fact that Facebook doesn't seem to want to allow me to say, "I don't know this person, don't show me them again," it makes wading through the gigantic list a lot more arduous.

Facebook also has made it a bit more difficult to filter friends.  It used to be that you could filter a list not only by school, but graduation year as well.  As near as I can tell now, that option is not available.  So, now I see not only people from my graduating class, but everyone who ever went to that school.  Its all well and good for my high school, which tended to have smaller classes, but I went to Syracuse University for college.  Syracuse tended to not have small classes... ever.  It's difficult enough to search for just my graduating class, now I have to try and filter out every other graduating class too.

The last reason is probably the most personal.  I never really had a lot of friends growing up.  I still don't.  A lot of the people I was friends with I do have as contacts on Facebook.  But there are a lot more people out there that I knew growing up that I wouldnt say I was great friends with.  Fringe classmates, people I know in passing, but not all that well, and a few crushes here and there.  Often when I look at the list of people Facebook suggests I might be friends with, I run across someone I knew in this capacity.  And, for that brief moment, I wonder if they would actually want to be Facebook friends with me, then usually move on.  I usually feel like if I were to Facebook friend them, it would almost be like stalking them, especially with the nature of Facebook's posting system.

Don't get me wrong.  If anyone actually wanted to Facebook friend me, and was someone I knew, I would most likely befriend them (there may be one or two people I wouldn't... everyone have those people in their past).  Unless that happens, my Facebook friends list will stay its lean 78.