My Friend's Friends' Friends

For those of you who are not yet on Friendster (both of you), it’s a website that maps out your personal network, i.e. everyone who you know through five degrees of separation or less. You create a profile of yourself, then create links to your friends’ profiles, who have links to their friends’ profiles, and so on and so on. You can just casually peruse through your network linearly, e.g. I go to my friend Amber's profile and click on her friend Rich and click on his friend Kelly who says in her bio that she’s a die-hard Slayer fan. So now I know that there is someone in my personal network who still listens to Slayer. I would have never guessed.

But that’s boring.

The real beauty of Friendster is the Gallery feature. It’s where you have full access to everyone in your network. In my case I have more than 150,000 people in my network within one to five degrees of separation of the friends I’ve listed. To narrow it down you can search the fields in people’s profiles like where they live, what their interests and hobbies are, what their occupation is, etc.

When I first discovered this feature I was excited to see what kind of interesting people my friends and their friends know. I restricted the Gallery search to people living in the Pittsburgh area, then clicked on the first profile that appeared, a guy named Milton. According to the occupation listed on his profile, Milton is a Straight-up Playa'. His interests include "talkin shit to you and your friends" and "keepin it gangsta." And evidently Milton is not alone in my network. A quick search revealed that next time I am in the mood to keep it gangsta, I can join Milton and 186 other friends of friends who have listed this under their interests.

There is also a feature where you can suggest that two people meet each other if you think they'd make a good match. So I could suggest that Xster, who likes "smoking all types of ill shit," meet Josh, who lists his occupation as Rolling Fatty Bluntz. Perhaps I could even meet these people myself! After all, I am only two degrees of separation from both of them. Though I don't need anyone to roll fatty bluntz or smoke ill shit with, they both also list "sleeping" and "eating" under their interests. Though it would never have occurred to me to list bodily functions as interests, at least it's a start.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been, but I was quite surprised to find my network full of people like Milton, Xster, and Josh. After a while it appeared that the collective interests of the people in my network could basically be boiled down to “creepin on hoez,” “Mr. T,” and the “Food Channel.” With a mix of bewilderment and morbid curiosity I continued to search through my network, seeing if there was something so outlandish that nobody I know listed as an interest. I was unsuccessful. In the half day I wasted on this pursuit, here were some of the favorite interests I learned my friends' friends have.

*knife fights

*boozin it up, collecting ded prez

*trying to talk like i'm one sick ass gangsta by saying, " holla like a playa!" and typing LiKe diS 2 gEt cHO aTtenShuN

*creepin on fools

*being a goddamned gangsta and bubblebaths and long walks on the beach

*getting pissed off about stuff

*poetry and porn

*jewish geography

*heroin

*big pimpin

(By the way, I have mentioned that I am a white person, right? And like most white people almost all of the folks I hang out with and such are white. Just wanted to get that out there....)

But more important than the prose of my acquaintances’ bios were their pictures. One of the things that you will quickly realize is that a picture really is worth a thousand words, and this is never more true than on Friendster. Many of the users need not even waste their efforts typing their bios. Their photos speak the loose string of misspelled words and expletives for them. One could guess that PoisonSexy, who chose a photo in which she's wearing a leather bustier that emphasizes the indecipherable tattoo on her chest, lists only "PARTAYing, chillin, porn" under interests. And it's not necessary to read the Relationship Status line to know that the 30-something-year-old man dressed as a robot is "single." The picture of the fat girl kissing her somewhat attractive friend sends the message loud and clear, “I may be obese, but at least I’m bisexual, and that’s hot, right?” And the countless women who post photos of themselves in bikinis that are smaller than an eye patch don’t even need to write the words, “I will do pretty much anything if you’ll just pay attention to me.”

About every five minutes you’re on this site you’ll find yourself thinking, “Who the hell is friends with these freaks?” And that, in a nutshell, is the whole sad sack. The answer is always, “MY friends.”

"Enjoy Us Now! We Won't Be Here Next Semester!"

It's now Sunday.

On Monday I would officially be in college.

At some point I found myself out in the hall in front of my 4th floor room. In front of me was a tall, blond guy who just so happened to be wearing a Smashing Pumpkins t-shirt. "That's funny", I thought to myself, "I don't remember him from Gabe's last night." There were only a skant few of us...the song Today wouldn't be released for two more days...

I said something about his shirt, he said something about seeing them in Des Moines the night before I saw them, and then he asked me if I wanted to go get some food at Perkin's with he and his buddies from home. What the hell else was I gonna do?

We hit it off right away and before lunch was over we were pretty much BFF's and gay for each other and etc. Between our common interests (film, music, smoking, drinking, misc) and the fact that we didn't know anyone else and lived across the hall from one another it was decided that we should "hang".

I think we got back to the dorm around 3:30 pm. After wandering around and finding nothing terribly interesting to do we went back up to our rooms to look through each others stuff and continue getting to know one other until we found something better to do.

About 5 minutes into it I found a box that he had brought down from Altoona with him full of Absolut Vodka bottles. Ah ha! Something better to do!

Justin put on some music (probably Faith No More or something of that ilk) and we brainstormed how we might spend our last night before college began. It didn't take very long. I think the conversation went something like this:

Justin: "Whatya wanna do?"
Me: "Hmm...we could do Vodka shots until we pass out..."

And away we went.

Now, chain drinking was a very popular method back in my day for under-aged drinkers to get drunk faster, and that was the method we chose. Basically it's a If You Take a Drink, I Take a Drink and so on and so forth. The afternoon went by in a flash.

I don't know how long it took EXACTLY (didn't seem like a long time) but before we knew it 3 full bottles were empty and we were FUCKED UP. Too fucked up. Too fucked up for Burge, too fucked up for the night before college, and definitely too fucked up for dinner service. So we decided to go to dinner service.

The next half an hour or so is a tad unclear, but I do remember choosing cereal as my dinner and feeling that I had picked wisely. Justin, on the other hand, thought that Spaghetti was the right move. Actually it wasn't JUST spaghetti, but for some reason spaghetti with chocolate milk sounded particularly appetizing to him. Or at least it did until we walked out of the cafeteria and began heading toward the lobby.

Some of what happened after that I remember very clearly, the rest was relayed to us in the days and weeks that followed by new acquaintances.

As we rounded the corner Justin began to make sounds and motions that made me think that perhaps he wasn't feeling well. There's a look that some people get, and maybe you've seen this look, when they just KNOW that they are about to blow chunks where they stand. He was making that look. His pace quickened and, after a cough that became a mouthful of spaghetti and chocolate milk and vodka and Perkin's, he started looking for a bathroom.

Luckily for him there was one just down the hall in the Burge lobby. Unfortunately, it was the ladies room.

I tried to help as best I could. Guiding, giving encouragement, getting people out of the way, but as soon as the bathroom door opened and the first shot sprayed everything in sight like a fire hose trying to put out a blaze, I let him have some personal time.

I can only imagine the experience he had in there. With the sound of my drunken laughter fading as the door closed behind him and the knowledge that it was just beginning, I like to think that he was too wasted to have considered his predicament too much. But you never know. If he CAN remember it, he isn't talking and it's probably for the best.

As for me, I found the nearest couch-back I could and passed out quickly. I awoke hours later with Justin near on the floor and someone nudging me to see if I was alive and alright.

I'm not sure how I got back and into my dorm room that night, but I do know that at 11:30 am the next morning in McBride Hall there was a Philosophy class with an empty seat and my college "experience" had begun...

There's No Accounting for Taste

I arrived in Iowa City on Friday, August 29th, 1993.

The sum total of people I knew in town was 2. One was my ex-girlfriend, who had left me the previous spring for a Mustang-driving-sweater-tied-around-the-neck assclown. The other was a moderately overweight male Chicagoan who I had gotten loaded with at Rocky Roccoco's in the "pedmall" and who, later that evening, attempted to crawl into bed with me whilst sleepwalking over orientation weekend. I knew what had to be done...find the smokers.

Burge seemed like a silly place to me and after wandering around a bit I couldn't help but notice how many WHITE people there were. White people as far as the eye could see. PRETTY white people too! I told a curious party that I was from Arkansas and they looked at me as if I might be lying. I guess my shoes, overall cleanliness, and similar skin pigment through them off, but not soon after the questions were flying...

"Wow! Where's that?"
"Do you drive cars and stuff?"
"There's an OUR-Kansas?"

It's what I would come to expect from Iowa and I'm From Chicago but Not Really Chicago More Like Downer's Grove or Willamette Chicago folk over my years there. People throw around terms like "Number One in Education" too much I think.

The next night I saw The Smashing Pumpkins alone at Gabe's Oasis with a surprisingly small crowd.

On Sunday I met Justin.