at least it's not myspace.com...

okay, okay, so i've got a friendster profile. yeah. i understand the irony in this, given the amount of mocking i've done of facebook and myspace and all that crap. and the fact that i have a blog. i set up the profile back in 2003 and really haven't done anything to it since. but i do check in on it from time to time because i get bored. and it has reconnected me with some long-lost college friends, which makes it not totally worthless.

but lately, friendster has been a little disturbing. not in a bad way, just in that the-world-is-a-madhouse kind of way. here's how:

1. a certain person from my past sent a message to my friendster profile. this was one of those "hey-i-still-love-you" messages. and goddamn it! i don't want him to still love me. and i don't know if i should respond. and if i should respond, i sure as hell don't want to respond via friendster! sheesh... so many layers of complication here...

2. one of my old kaplan LSAT students tracked me down and sent me a message. here's the awful part -- i honestly for the life of me can't remember who this kid is! i taught LSAT for close to 3 years and had a lot of students over that time period. there are definitely a few who stand out, but i couldn't possibly be expected to remember all of them, right? i mean, it's not like we were building important academic relationships -- it was pretty much groups of people listening to me explain necessity vs. sufficiency and how the LSAT tests your ability to recognize assumptions in arguments for eight class sessions and that was that. so, yeah, this old student of mine sends me this nice message, but i don't even remotely recognize his name or his picture. does this make me a terrible person?

3. out of total and complete boredom, i did a friendster search the other day for people from my hometown. that search led me to the profile of a girl who was a pretty good friend of mine back in junior high. now she looks totally cracked out and like a complete hipster cliche! among her interests is "getting tattoos" and "driving around in my man's 78 pickup truck". oh my... at least she doesn't live in mississippi anymore.

but this got me thinking about this girl, who had an older sister who was part of the popular crowd when we were in school. what is it about the kids with popular older siblings? somehow those kids more often than not default into coolkidness, as if inheriting some sort of social monarchy. i was reading this girl's friendster profile and i actually felt a little intimidated by her, kinda like i did when we were teenagers. it's like those kids with cool older siblings get insider information into what music and movies and clothes you're supposed to be into. i dunno. maybe it's just my deep-seated insecurities, but i found myself thinking that if this girl were to stumble across my profile, would she think i was a total nerd? a complete lame-o? a member of the B-squad?

yes, i'm an idiot. so thanks, friendster, for exactly replicating the social angst and discomfort that the real world puts me through every day.

i just hope that my brother and sister appreciate how easy i made it on them by being older than they are.