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> The word "friend" itself takes on different meanings to different groups of people -- especially after the rise of FB -- 1000s of "friends" on a social networ
by johnchristopher 8y ago
> The word "friend" itself takes on different meanings to different groups of people -- especially after the rise of FB -- 1000s of "friends" on a social network is very different from 100s of "friends" you've only met once which is also very different from the ~5 "friends" you see on a daily basis, and much different from 0/1/2 "best" friends who you think you'd do anything for.
Wait a minute.
Has anyone really consider their 10,100 or 1000 facebook friends as IRL friends ? Do some people really confuse both kinds ?
- saghm 8y agoI think GP's point isn't that this is the same as traditional friendship, but that not everyone understands the word "friend" to mean this anymore. While you might consider "friend" to mean "IRL friend", others might not interpret it the same way. At the very least, I think you can probably accept that in certain narrow contexts, the word "friend" doesn't necessarily mean "IRL" (e.g. "I sent the Facebook event invite to all my friends"), so it shouldn't be too much of a leap to realize that other people who focus much more on social media than you might could potentially use contexts like this significantly more in their conversations.
- johnchristopher 8y agoI understand how the context changes the meaning but there's a narrative floating around that people aren't actually doing that (I take for example the "friends help you move" meme).
- solveit 8y agoI have a good number of fb friends that I would absolutely recommend for a job. This has little to do with how close I am to them and a lot to do with the kinds of stuff they post/comment.
- johnchristopher 8y agoYeah, but you aren't confusing them with `friends`, these are `facebook friends`, right ?