Death to Friendster

I don't know why I didn't do this sooner, but I finally just deleted my Friendster account. Remember Friendster? It was Myspace before Myspace morphed into Facebook...or something like that. It hardly matters; you know what I mean.

I seem to remember being really excited when Friendster first appeared because it seemed so novel--the whole "connect with people online" thing that wasn't about trolling for sex (though you could have used Friendster for that, I suppose; I never got enough profile views for it to matter).

I labored over that profile--trying to make myself sound as eclectic and yet attractive to the general populace in the hopes that I'd somehow be validated by this computer-based socializing. There was a whole "Electric Dreams" element to it, really...as if the computer on which I was creating all of these cheeky, super-cute descriptions might accidentally fall in love with me. And then I'd totally spurn it, of course.

Looking back at my Friendster profile last night, I, too, was underwhelmed. No wonder I never saw any action as a result. "Is that me?" I wondered. Then I looked at Myspace and Facebook and saw a similar profile and wondered if I should just delete all of them... BUT, I like playing Scrabble with Tim and Blaise on Facebook, so I kept that. And Myspace had better pictures of me, so...

Or is the truth that I, too, no longer know how to be alone? (How's that for technologically induced existential angst?) There's something so validating about knowing someone's looking at you online and "interacting" with you and telling you how great you still look--which is a lovely by-product, I admit. And I do genuinely love quasi-reconnecting with folks to whom I may never send a postcard. But how far does that interaction go? I guess only my Scrabble win/lose record will tell me.