I have resisted joining most/all of the social network sites for a variety of reasons. But pressure (mostly from family wanting to share pictures of kids, etc., which puts a fair amount of moral onus on you when you turn it down) is growing, and eventually I might (or might not) cave.
But I would never be one of those people who collects “friends” as trophies, and I’m inherently suspicious of anyone with a high friends count. Sure, I can imagine allowable exceptions (maybe those in sales, Mormons with 720 cousins, or quasi-public figures, performers, etc.). But my default assumption, FWIW, YMMV, is that someone with a thousand friends who doesn’t front a popular rock band is a flaming attention whore. I certainly don’t have hundreds and hundreds of friends IRL.
But – I don’t know this world, not having participated in it other than as an occasional onlooker. By the standards of social networking sites, what, IYHO, is (1) a “normal” number of friends for an average, non-attention-whoring, civilian to have; and (2) the threshold beyond which you would conclude, with a reasonable degree of comfort, gee, this person lives their life to get validation through being super-popular, as documented by their friendage?
The context, BTW: the most recent invitation I got came from a girl whose 220 or so friend count struck me as kind of excessive, albeit I was biased in favor of thinking her kind of an AW from her prior conduct anyhow. Am I right to think that?
Also something that comes up in the literature a lot is Dunbar’s Number which could be interpreted to mean that any friend list over 150 could stand to do with some pruning.
The thing about Facebook is that in order to interact with people they pretty much must become Friends.
I have a crapload of Facebook Friends because I knew them in high school or summer camp or 4th grade or whatever. While no one expects that we actually care deeply about each other and will write weekly, it was fun to catch up with one or two messages. We had to Friend each other to even do that. And once Friended I don’t really bother culling unless they send me too many superpokes or whatever.
FWIW I’m 35 and I find that I totally keep up more with the friends and family I do care about thanks to Facebook. I get to see their status change, yes even read their 25 things. I knew my little sister had broken up with her longtime boyfriend because I saw her relationship status change on Facebook, and I knew to call her. Without that it would have been a week or more because we just don’t talk on the phone that often.
Not quite in line with the OP, but anyone who tries to friend me on GoodReads who has more friends than books is an automatic “no thanks.” I had one guy who literally only listed ONE book–his own vanity press effort that held zero interest for me–but who had over a thousand “friends.” Yeah, he’s tried to friend me like five times now. Fergit it, buddy, you’re gonna be one of those annoying attention whores who send out bulletins every time you go read to the kids at the library, titling it a “Personal Appearance!” Feh.
I’ve noticed that a couple of my friends have become friend whores. One has 500+ friends, including several people who I know she can’t stand or people I know she hasn’t really talked to in years.
I think what happens is that people are sometimes inclined to accept others as “friends” when a refusal might create an awkward situation. Also, some are sufficiently shallow to accept friend requests from those who are attractive or popular because it elevates their own status by association.
I think anyone knows a thousand people “by some way or another”. Any sort of organized hobby, for instance, probably adds a hundred people or more into that category.
I have resisted the urge to “friend” anyone I haven’t actually willingly interacted with IRL in my adulthood, I have no work-related “friends” nor relatives on my Facebook friends list (the latter don’t seem to use it), and I’m a recluse. Yet even I have 92 friends there. I’d think any average, active, socially willing person amasses 200 without much effort to find long-lost peripheral people etc.
I don’t know if I’d set a particular number as defining a friendwhore, but any Facebook friend whom, if we were to meet face to face, I couldn’t at the very least say where we had met and what common experiences we’d shared (so even 2nd-grade classmates would qualify to some extent), is someone I should probably cut out. If more than half your Facebook friends fall into this category (and you’re not personally noteworthy enough that people you’ve never met know your name), you’re definitely a friendwhore.
Facebook friends don’t really represent a whole lot to me. I’ll add people I’ve known for a couple of hours and will never see again. It’s not a status thing, it’s just what everyone does. If I went through the list, there would be a few people from high school that know me because I was kind of a visible personality during my junior and senior years whom I don’t know, but by and large I could tell you how I know everyone on the list.
I have nearly 200 friends on Facebook. Clearly I’m not BFFs with all or even most of them. Then again, I have a lot of IRL friends who aren’t on Facebook.
I know them in different ways:
About 70 are from my home town - friends from high school or my brothers friends
About 50 are friends from college, 35 of them fraternity brothers
Another 50 are coworkers from my last job
The rest are friends of friends, people I know or met around, etc.
There really aren’t any total strangers. I don’t “friend” people I don’t know. I’m not actively friends with most of them, but just about any one I could have a conversation with if we bumped into each other on the street.
And if we had Facebook in college or business school, I’m sure I could easily triple or quadruple my number of friends. Between active brothers, alumni, girlfriends, friends of friends and randoms, there were probably 100+ people who were in my college fraternities extended circle (which is kind of the point). Now it’s just mostly people I know or still remember and recognize 10+ years after graduation.
I was in an evening part time business school program so I never really kept in touch with anyone as we would all be in different classes on a different pace to graduation. Had I had Facebook, there could have been another 50 “friends”.
There are also a few weirdo’s in there as well.
My point is, it adds up after awhile if you are involved in a lot of activities and have a lot of acquaintances.
I have quick facebook check about 177 friends, the majority of whom I knew in either high school or college and still keep in touch with (via facebook) then add in the relatives and many of my co-workers who work for the same company but different locations (that I trained with or see at meetings and we go out for drinks afterwards or whatever) and it starts to get up there.
I have 80 friends on Facebook, and I know each and every one personally. A few are people I went to middle school with (and who friended me first; this makes adifference somehow), most are from college, and some are from here and there, including the SDMB. There is one notable exception, and I’m still trying to figure out why she friended me, except that she thinks I might be sympathetic to her cause. (She’s the wife of a notorious political figure.) Some of them post several times a day, some seldom post at all, which also makes a difference.
I’m pretty comfortable with the size of my friends list, although I might go as high as 100 if they’re people I’m directly connected with. I know people who have friends lists that run into the thousands, but I think that’s attention whoring and seeking validation more than anything else.
A friend of mine has 1,569 friends on Facebook. I seriously do not know what’s up with that. Can he possibly know them all? I do not know. He’s in business school though, maybe he thinks it’s a good idea to network with everyone he walks by on the street?
I have 225 Facebook friends. I do know the large majority of them. A few (like five) are friends from high school. A few more are friends from college. A lot of them are people I go to school with now, and a lot more are people I was in Peace Corps with. The only people I’ve never met in person are Dopers, I think. (Although most of the Dopers I’m FB friends with I have met in person.) I really don’t think my number is excessive in some way.
So I’d place the line somewhere between 225 and 1,569.
Networking is important, but quality is often more important than quantity. It’s like people on LinkedIn who are in sales and have thousands and thousands of contacts. What’s the point? You don’t know 99% of them. In terms of being an important connection, it’s about as valuable as the phone book.
IRL, I have a reasonably big social circle where there are lots of people I know in passing, so on Facebook I have a similarly wide group of ‘friends.’ I don’t think anyone pretends they’re all best friends for ever type friends. It’s more like ‘this is Simon that I know from Charlie’s Bar.’
One man did want to add me just because he wanted to add more friends to his list. I’d never met him and was never likely to. That was odd. I’ve also had a few people add me when I’ve met them once very briefly, and I don’t accept their friends requests unless they have particularly scintillating profiles. I also ignore friends requests that are really groups.
