Facebook

Facebook has brought to the forefront of my social life a necessity I seldom considered before selling my soul and signing up two months ago: friend quantity. Sure, we knew that the cool girls reigned in high school, but never before has such an unquestionably accurate popularity meter indicated down to the last individual your worth as a human being (or, at least the precise number of people who thought you were worth the two seconds it takes to 'friend' someone).... I occasionally scold myself for buying into the superficiality of online social networking. But to delete my profile would be to admit defeat, and what would my friends—real and otherwise—think if I gave in? Still, nothing can belie the masochism of logging in daily. A few mouse clicks reveal photos of parties to which I was not invited and wall-to-wall conversations regarding outings that no one bothered to tell me about. Somehow, though, addicted and dead set on avoiding crippling uncoolness, I struggle on with Gatsby-like tenacity. A thousand "friends" is the new American Dream.

—Jennifer DeBerardinis, Not Clicking With the Facebook Crowd. The Washington Post, Monday, July 30, 2007; Page A15