Day 15

Last night, Friendster finally made it to my list of frequented sites in Foxfire. I'd been wondering if it would ever break through, and I'm surprised it took as long as it did--almost fifteen days of constant visitations. But that just shows how long I'd been ignoring it. How long, I wonder, will it take for the site to disappear from the most-frequented sites once the thirty days is up? Sad, really, that I'm assuming I won't be returning much after the month is over, that I'm already assuming my attempts to rescuscitate its usage will be unsuccessful. But fifteen days have made me a bit weary and pessimistic.

Last night, I ran into a friend who I tried to add as a friend on Friendster. We did not discuss. I don't know if he received my invitation. I suppose I could have asked. But something seemed to tell me that discretion was possibly better. I remember, several years ago, I added someone else. When we ran into each other, he mentioned it--"I hadn't been on Friendster in months," he said, but why not? At that time, Friendster had fallen into disusage among my peers but not to quite the depth it has now. It was a nice joke, to be Friendster friends, with this person I had somehow managed never to add or to be added by. How would it be taken now? Would said friend tell me to add him on Facebook? (We are actually already MySpace buddies.)

Today's attempts ran this way: I contacted one Friendster friend, one acquaintance, attempted to add one acquaintance friend, and actually added a friend based on a friend request. Of the acquaintance I wrote to, he has a lot of Asian women on his connections list as well as a lot of younger women. Some of the younger women are definitely legitimate--some of them are church people I know of through third parties, which makes me wonder if Friendster is perhaps catching on among younger people (these folks would have been, like, teens when Friendster was getting used among my peers), because some of these people have been on in the past week. Really cool! Maybe I've found the active users at last. The Asian connections would lead me to believe either he accepts all comers as friends, or--and I think this more likely--he has been to Asia and knows lots of folks over there. If I'm remembering, he went over there to teach for a year. The appearance on his page of someone who had added me a few months whose legitimacy I questions caused me to go ahead and add her. Hopefully, she's not some Asian robot (but her profile was set to private, so I'm betting not).

The totals, as a result, are now seventeen Friendster friends written, two replies; twelve acquaintances written or added as friends, one reply; five invitations extended, no replies; fifteen strangers written, no replies; two profile views. One added friend, bringing my total to twenty-nine.