Mankind is destined to be social and consequently cannot live without society. I am lucky to have some very good friends who are true and sincere. I can depend on them. Over the period the definition of friendship has changed. In the past used to be pen friends with whom one can only communicate through writing letters. But I never had any pen friend. With the introduction of social sites like Orkut, Facebook and Tagged etc. it is always nice to rediscover lost friends, colleagues or college friends and there is also a possibility of rekindle friendship that may have rusted with disuse. I have my accounts on these social sites.
In my friend list along-with my known friends I have many people with whom I have never met in my life and will probably never meet. Some of these aspiring friends have the good manners to introduce themselves and state why they want to be friendly, may be similar field of work, common friends, shared interests. However, most of them are so irritating that if we ignore their friendship, they keep forcing it upon you.
On social networking sites women especially get friendship requests rained upon them. People like me who take “friend” word seriously must be baffled by these requests. We want to have strangers in our friends list just to add up the number and boast of hundreds of friends. I keep in touch with them and get reminders about their birthdays and latest developments in their lives. Quite often when they move abroad, unable to visit India I have the advantage to be in contact with them.
I am astonished when I find some with over a thousand names of their list. I am quite surprised to find, after ignoring many requests, 140-odd names on my list. How and when did I end up making so many friends? And where are they when, once in a while, I need a friend? I feel that the friendship generated through networking sites, you just develop time pass friendship.
