i honestly think that we as humans find the need to classify things. it’s easy to see: biology class and our classification of living things. the periodic table. the menu at mcdonald’s. grocery aisles. we seem to be drawn to classifications. so, it wouldn’t strike me to think that people do classify their friends… high school friends, college friends, work friends, family friends. at what cost do we classify these people in our lives and what happens when people mix?

i may be using the incorrect word here. maybe i’m thinking about “labeling” our friends instead of classifying them. like our best friend. how does one earn that label “best friend”? and is there a “worst friend”? how do you earn (or give to someone) this “label”?

this ties in to the notion of “levels” of friends. if someone (or some people) are not your “best friend(s)”, then are they just “friends”? is there some sort of level or criteria that is somehow reached or fulfilled to be “best”? are there people who you might call a friend, but are at a level “lower” than “friend”?

it’s tough to answer any of these questions really, because it really makes you take a look at yourself both how you see you and how you are reflected in the friends that you have. i am a believer in the saying that “you are your friends,” and i think it takes a lot of observation and reflection to look at the people you consider friends and see that part of “you” in them. in contrast, maybe that is why we lose touch and stop being friends with people: maybe we grow or change and we no longer see that part that we “are” in that person anymore.

friendship is one of those concepts that people have struggled to understand and has been deeply philosophically examined through the centuries. i don’t think we’ll ever have a true definition of friendship and i think the struggle of who is and who is not a friend is part of discovering the meaning of life. so, while the modern dictionaries may call upon a group of people to agree on a meaning for the word “friend” (that’s typically how definitions are put in dictionaries if you didn’t know), the words of Aristotle have always been the closest definition for me:

what is a friend? a single soul dwelling in two bodies

thank you to all my friends!

-m

…if someone “friends” you on facebook, and when they ask how you know each other, if you say you hooked (and you didn’t) what does that say about you to that person (same or oppposite sex)? you wanted to hook up with them?
…what levels of intimacy to couples display on their social network?
…are there cliques on social networks? or is each social network a clique in itself?
…if social networks do thrive, will there be an academic field dedicated to studying them? where does it belong: sociology? computer science? biology?

also, i think if one was to pursue a Ph.D. in sociology, there can be a lot of research topics in social networks.

that’s all.

-m