Facebook Friends: A Comprehensive Analysis

You’ve had a crappy day at work. You’re exhausted, mentally and physically. All you want to do when you get home is flop down on the couch and enjoy a little time that is completely your own; time that you can fill with virtually any activity you choose. So what do you do? You open up your computer and you read a series of short summarizations about all the mundane things your friends are doing and thinking. And then, when you’ve finished reading all of those, you post an equally mundane summarization of your day, content with the knowledge that, as you type, your friends are also getting home from work and flopping down on the couch, as eager to read about you as you were to read about them just a few minutes ago.

This concept of computer-mediated “hypernarration” (I don’t know if that’s my own term or someone else’s) in the context of social networking websites like Facebook is a fascinating study all its own, but one that’s a little too academic for the purposes of this blog. What I find peculiar about the whole thing is that, despite differences in age, personality, and various socioeconomic factors, all of us Facebook users tend to have the same types of Facebook “friends.” The specifics may differ, but I think that a few different general categories stand out prominently, and if you have or have had a Facebook, you’ll be lying if you don’t agree.

1.) Your “best friends”

These are usually the people you’re closest to in real life-- best friends, significant others, family, etc.-- and also the people you’re most interested in on Facebook. In addition to commenting on almost every one of their statuses, you check their profiles daily- sometimes more often- just to see if anything’s changed. These are the people to whom, when they call/text/visit you to tell you some piece of news, you’re not embarrassed to admit, “I know, I saw you changed your relationship status/employment status/profile picture!” You understand their more cryptic status updates. You know when and where every one of their profile pictures was taken. And they’re some of the only people whose particularly mundane statuses actually interest you.

2.) Your “frenemies”

You have some friends in real life who aren’t exactly your favorite people in the world, but they’re tolerable, because maybe you don’t have to see them every day, or maybe they’re relatively shy and quiet in person. Parents and other relatives can often be a good example of this type of friend (but, of course, not my relatives).

But in the faceless, blameless world of social networking, these people have a fresh realm in which to annoy you. Those friends whom, ordinarily, you only have to tolerate in small quantities seem to pop up on your Facebook news feed multiple times a day, every day. The ones who are normally quiet and reserved seem to kick down their walls of social anxiety over the Internet, and they too develop what can only be called “Facebook diarrhea”.

And their posts could not be more annoying. They can be pointless, boring, pretentious, whiny, or rude. Frequently, they’re some combination of those. The worst of these friends will even intrude so much as to comment all the fucking time on every fucking thing you post, until it comes to the point where you censor what you post to minimize your chances of hearing from them. Because the problem is, you can’t un-friend these people. You still have relatively regular real-life interactions with them, and they’d notice if you were to un-friend them. They always notice. There’s a special place for this type of friend, and it’s under the “hide posts from” option on the bottom of your feed.

3.) Your “photogenic friends”

Some of your Facebook friends are fucking gorgeous, sexual preferences completely aside. Maybe they have photographer friends who love to take artsy photos of them. Maybe they entered the performing arts after high school-- acting, singing, modeling-- and they always look perfect in their profile pictures. Or maybe they’ve just always had perfectly sculpted arms/faces/boobs. Either way, you have to keep these people as your friends so you can see any and every new photograph of them, and drool.

4.) Your friends who are your age, but are in completely different life stages than you

You know exactly what I’m talking about. The girl who sat next to you in math class had a baby while you were off at college, acting like one. A friend of a friend you met one time married her military boyfriend and moved to a different country. A guy from your elementary school t-ball team just graduated with his MBA and was hired at an accounting firm where his starting salary will be six figures. And you follow their every post, because you need to know how the other half lives. You are absolutely fascinated by every wedding photo, every pre-natal appointment update, because these people have lives that you very much do not. It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s a life you actually want. But maybe you will have the same experiences someday, so you need to know what it will be like. This type of Facebook friend is the perfect window into your future.

5.) Your “trainwrecks”

This is, without a doubt, my favorite type of Facebook friend, and I’ll bet it’s yours, too. You may have any number of different relationships with your trainwreck friends. They could be ex-lovers, old classmates you always hated, family members, and so on. But the two things they all have in common is that 1.) they haven’t got their lives even a fraction of together, and 2.) they’ve done something to you in life such that you now very much enjoy your front-row seat to their ongoing shitshows. Maybe the girl who beat you to the valedictorian spot in high school now has, and posts about, nightly panic attacks due to her massive Harvard workload. Maybe your first boyfriend posts photos of one skanky chick after another, and you watch with joy as his relationship status changes weekly. Maybe the bitch who always made fun of you in the cafeteria now gets bombed nightly, and posts varying degrees of embarrassing photos of herself-- drunk table dancing, drunk screaming-with-her-eyes-closed, drunk doing Car Bombs, and drunk stripping-- all of which will surely prevent her from ever acquiring a marginally respectful job. These are people who you’re clearly beating in the game of life, and you keep them as friends on Facebook so you don’t miss a second of the wonderful, terrible show.