littled.net

… and I’m losing.

It hasn’t bothered me up till now but today when I was at a loose end, I casually looked at some of my friends’ profiles to check how many other friends they had. Frankly I was astonished — 80, 90, hundreds? Is it really possible to have that many friends? I’m not sure I’ve even ever met that number of different people. Or, as I head into my late 30s am I just getting plain grumpy and lazy when it comes to making and sustaining friendships? Err, yes, probably.

I started to feel quite ashamed of my paultry 40-odd friends, especially as some of them may not actually be, umm,  real people (one of them may be a friend’s cuddly toy which I initially had some qualms about adding but then did so in a flurry of desperate activity to bump up my numbers).

But why does it matter? Do I really want to compete in a game I know I’ll never be able to win? Is it even a game anyway, or, unbelievably, are my friends really just more popular than me? Hmm, I guess the answers to those questions are possibly, no, yes and yes. It only possibly matters when you’ve obviously got a secret agenda — for instance you’ve had a “friend” request from that really popular person at university, or even worse, an ex. I say “no” to not wanting to compete because it’s in my nature to lose interest in things I have no clear ability to do even reasonably well in (like being able to change a duvet cover in less than half an hour without getting angry for instance).

I also looked at Flickr today and realised most of my contacts (about the same number as Facebook friends) I have never met or am likely to meet. I just like their photos; and can do so without any sense of social inadequacy. Much better, although it has to be said you can’t play scrabble on it. Well, you probably could, but it might take some time. Actually, I bet there’s actually a Flickr group for doing just that…