Will You Be My Friend?

For those of you who are familiar with the myspace.com phenomenon, you've seen this question before--conceivably more than once. My myspace page* is constantly bombarded with messages from random people (mainly weirdo foreigners here in Korea) asking to be added to my friends list for various reasons. Most of the requests resemble one of the following: "I'm new here and you seem like a cool person. Want to hang out?" or, "I'm looking for love. I think we might be good together!" and, finally, the creepiest one to date, "I'll pay $5000.00 for one night with you. No sex--all you have to do is tie me up and torture me" (cringe, gag). Of course, my curiosity always leads me to click on the requester's profile link to find out what kind of moron would have the audacity to ask such a ridiculous question. I'm usually not surprised to find that he/she typically has a grand total of three or four friends listed on his/her myspace profile, but I'm continually baffled by the overwhelming amount of messages I receive from such people in a given week.

I realize we live in an era where digital relationships are not only feasible, but widely acceptable. However, when I receive a superficial (and sometimes nauseating) message requesting my friendship or, moreover, my services, I have an overwhelming urge to respond with "No." A solid, resounding "No!" followed by a reply message that might read like this: "You're weird, and there's a reason why you only have three friends on your myspace page." I usually refrain from responding in this manner, however, because I'm quickly reminded of the fact that the Internet--in all of its glory--is curiously addicting and that these poor (and perhaps somewhat demented) souls are the by-product of a generation that is gradually being sucked into a cyber world. They lack real-life skills because their very existence is consumed by the Internet and, therefore, they need a digital method to find digital friends that will hopefully lead to real-life relationships.

Or maybe these people are just plain weird.

Regardless, I can't find it in myself to retaliate with an ugly response to the plethora of odd requests I get on a weekly basis. Instead, I delete most messages without responding, while hoping to the Lord above that my myspace page will lose some of its popularity amongst the socially challenged.

You have to love living life in the twenty-first century.

*http://www.myspace.com/lizmcclintic