所謂朋友

After the invention of Facebook, you don’t even know how many so-called friends you have. And the thing is the number of friend increases everyday, so you don't even bother to know about it. Nowadays, once you meet someone, who has a facebook account, will automatically become your “friend”. He/she could be your co-worker, could be your boss, could be your friend’s friend, could be someone you have seen once only, could also be your primary school classmate, your secondary school classmate, your undergrad classmate. People just request to be your friend even though you don’t even remember him/her. The only thing you can do is to make the choice to accept or to decline, and it is not an easy choice at all. What if your boss requests you to be his/her friend, would you add him/her? To add or not to add, it is always the question. In fact, now the term of friend is no long “the friend” you used to use. However, the thing is you share your everyday life with these so-called friend, you post “what’s on your mind” everyday or even every hour. You upload your pictures from your vacation, what you ate in the dinner, or even what new scar you just got from accident. Basically, you just publicize your life to everyone else. Of course, you could argue that you can adjust privacy setting to restrict people who can see your post or your picture. The fundamental thing is there is a new definition of “friend”.

I am not trying to discuss the sociology of social networking or personal privacy on internet. I just suddenly have a thought about “friend” when I was facebooking. So I ask myself what “friend” means to me. I categorize all my friends in different groups: best friend, good good friend, good friend, just “friend”, non-enemy friend. (Here I am talking about friend you have met in person, not “net friend”.)

Best friend: Lifetime relationship. They may not be with you all the time, but you can bother them as many times as you want (even they will mad at you), and still it will not affect your friendship with them. You can cry, mad, lost your mind in front of them. You can share anything with them.

Good-good friend: They could be your co-workers, or your old buddies from high school. Someone who gives their helping hand when you need. Again, similar to best friend, they may not be with you all the time, but they will just show up when you need them. They are not your best friend to share your secret or sadness, but usually you share happiness with them.

Good friend:  There is time limitation for good friend. Usually good friend is people who are with you in the present time. They are usually your co-workers or current classmates. You spend most of time with them, you go out with them, you gossip with them. However, when your life path separate from them (e.g. they become your ex-coworker or ex-classmate), most of them will not be your “good friend” anymore. Although you still contact with them or go out with them occasionally for reunion, the friendships will no longer be the same as when you were working / studying with them.

Friend: You say hi / bye to them, be nice to them. You barely know them but you will write something on their wall on their birthday or when they write something sad on their facebook. Basically, you just socialize with them. They can also be your ex-buddies; you may check them out once in a while, but that’s it.

Non-enemy friend: I guess everyone have consensus on the definition of it…

So, after defining what friend means to me, now I count how many best friend, good-good friend, good friend do I have.

It turns out that I have:

4 Best friends

10 Good-good friends

15 Good friends

I am not sure how these numbers mean to me. But I think I am glad that I have few best friends and many good-good friends (10 accounts a lot to me, I guess…). Especially after what happened to me recently, I see more clearly who treat me as best friend or good-good friend.  Then, it also raises another question, how many of my friend treats me as their best friend and good-good friend? Umm…