Saturday, November 21, 2015

Who is a Friend?

With the advent of facebook revolution, we all are entitled to freinds list exceeding 100s for less social people and exceeding 1000 for social people. Gender will also play a significant role in the number of friends you have on facebook. Old times definition of friend is summarized by statement " A friend in need is a friend indeed!!" Have you ever wondered how many of those 100s of friends in fb list will turn up when you need? If you were to think honestly,  may be 4 or 5 out of 100+ will come to your rescue in toubled times. Then what about other friends in the fb signify ?

Acquaintances - These are the folks whom we know by face and probably have met couple of times on business or personal front. We just want to keep in touch as any social animal would want to.

Relations    - These are next-of-kin who are technically not friends usually spread across various age groups. But some of them could be friends depending on the closeness and affinity.

compulsion friends - Lets take case of a girl who is studying in college or working and she receives a friend request from her lecturer or boss. Even though it is not a hard and fast rule but many a times she accepts it out of compulsion. This explains it.

Benefit friends - We befriend some folks in power with a hope to get some benefit from them or some favors from them in future.

Gravity Friends - Lets take a pretty looking girl or a handsome male, there would be many folks in opposite sex who want to be acquainted at the least and keep sending friend requests. Some like such attention and that explains the huge friends list.

Alumni Friends - For school/college passouts, their alma mater is very close to their heart. They try to keep in touch with the gang who went to school/college.

Courtesy Friends - Be it a neighbor in the place you live or a staff from the place you work, they are your facebook list because you don't want to be rude enough to decline their friend request. They are courtesy friends per me.

Same situation friends - we connect ourselves with people going through similar stage in life like parents of your kid's classmates, your prospective neighbor in apartment you plan to buy.


I would like to conclude that a true friend need not be on your facebook, need not wish you luck on your life events, need not like your pictures/videos shared, need not respond to your status messages but he/she would be there when ever you are in need.  Also don't count your friends by looking at friends list in fb.

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