You want to be my friend?

After our lecture from a few weeks ago that discussed gender and how we represent ourselves with photos on such social networking sites such as Facebook (is even owning a bebo account cool anymore?) got me thinking of how we use these sites as a social tool amongst our friends. With a conscious view of Facebook I started to take a more critical stance in how we portray and interact through this technology. It seems this social tool is almost abused or exploited to place individuals into a social status ranking. Just browsing through my friends on Facebook its revealed that a large amount have at least 300 contacts... and counting. Who actually talks to 300 people on a daily or even weekly basis? Are these people actually connected with a "friend" in a physical, tangible friendship in the real world? Maybe this social activity is redefining the term of friendship. Many occasion, people I know vaguely add me as a "friend" on Facebook yet when seen in the flesh simply ignore you or avoid the awkward interaction with some one they knew from high school or a party but are apparently friends through the cyberspace world. Maybe this dependency on facebook as a social networking tool is creating a phobia of real life human interaction, or maybe just a statement to boost the egos of the socialites amongst us.