LESSONS: Friends Lists, Self-Worth, Add Counts
I was thinking of remaining a "Blog Virgin" and not posting anything on here, but I finally succumbed because I do have some things I'd like to point out regarding MySpace.
Number Lists Can Be Misleading
One thing I've noticed about people on MySpace is that they judge you by what they see on the surface:
Everything was all text-based and you had more access to information and could lift information off people more easily because there were fewer safety protocols to protect against hackers.
Some of the things I've seen on MySpace that fool people. They are sly Add Tactics I've seen that get people to add them:
You'll get a whole bunch of people who get added to your List, but you don't know a lot of these people. If you just want to socialize, that's fine. However, if you think that having thousands of friends is a measure of self-worth, that's unhealthy and unrealistic.
That's how you get Socialites who have lots of people they socialize with but actually feel alone in a crowd. You get sucked into Peer Pressure because you have to live up to an image that people prescribe to you and then you find yourself trapped in that image of being what you think other people want you to be.
People may think I'm overanalyzing a simple MySpace User Add Concept, but it always starts out innocent and something little before it grows into a Monster that rages out of control. You'll see this in:
Business Model: Push and Pull Strategy
As a Business Analyst, I'm always comparing things to see if I can apply the same Business Model to it.
When it comes to Friends Lists, it's just like money. The more Friends you have to easier it is to attract people. The less friends you have, the harder it is.
People with small Friends Lists have to work hard at going getting people to add them on their Friends Lists while people who have some desirable trait easily attract them.
In Economics, this would be the Pull and Push Strategy:
PULL STRATEGY: People come to you and want to be added to your Friends List. You don't have to do anything except APPROVE or DENY them.
PUSH STRATEGY: That's when you have to go to people add ask to be added on their Friends List. You have to work at pushing your product into the market.
When it comes to the size of Friends Lists, the more Friends you have means the more you have to spread out your attention if you're trying to maintain your Friends.
WIth some people who are Beautiful Models, Celebrities, or have some noticeable trait that makes them attractive, they don't have to worry about losing friends.
For people who don't appear to have any attractive qualities aside from being a warm body, they're more likely to lose Friends over time.
I've seen that the Momentum of Friends Lists increases with Higher Numbers. Perhaps it's some allure of mystery when people wonder why someone has a lot of Friends.
Maybe people think that individual must possess some quality or something people want, which piques people's curiosity. So people who come across their pages will add them.
Personality Types Found on MySpace
Usually people attract friends by either being physically attractive, witty, or smart. Physically attractive people, especially women, have the easiest time attracting Friends. However, the down side is vulgar or lewd comments.
Witty or funny people will tend to attract other people who enjoy humor. That's where you rely on Personality to compensate for looks.
Intelligent people lure people in by proving that they're smart. If you do it in the correct way without coming off as arrogant about your Intelligence, you can gain people's respect or they'll defer to your Knowledge and Expertise.
Sometimes Attractive People are intrigued by Intelligent Individuals. Same with people who like humor. Though sometimes Intelligent People can come off as drab.
Usually Intelligent People and Funny People tend to have a falling out with other people when they reach higher numbers because it becomes more apparant as you hit Friends Lists with over 1,000 people that it's physically impossible to know or remember the people on your List.
Some people want to know that they're special and not just a number or "Belt on the Notch" of your Friends Lists, which is what a lot of people tend to do when they seek Friends Lists high numbers.
The whole Friends List aspect becomes more like a Video Game to see who can score the highest number of points by having the most friends.
I once ran across a MySpace Page where this attractive female with large boobs wrote in her profile that it was done out of a bet to see if she could get over 1,000 Friends in less than a week by showing off her boobs in her Picture Gallery.
Needless to say she won. It just goes to show there are a lot of horny men out there that are motivated to add women on their Friends Lists if they're scantily clad and showing off their assets.
That's an example of how men can pig out on Eye Candy. Eye Candy is really sweet and stimulates the pleasure centers of your brain, but it doesn't have any Intellectually nutritional value.
I've been around for a long time and what you see in this MySpace Phenomenon is really just another variation of how Sex sells in a Digital Medium.
Whore Train Economics
There have been a lot of "Whore Trains" circulating. Some people are ready to jump on the trail like it's a Rollecoaster while others turn their nose up at it because they think it's a cheap way of pumping up your Friends List with "Fake Friends."
Technically, that's true where the relationships you're developing by "whoring" yourself around like that aren't as solid. It's just number.
However, form a Marketing Perspective, that's what you do in Business. You go for QUANTITY and then you go for QUALITY. People may not like that approach toward MySpace Friends or Friends in general, but when it comes to Law of Averages, you have more options if you have more friends.
There's that scene in "When Harry Met Sally" where Harry Burns says something insulting to Sally Albright.
HARRY: Obviously, you haven't experienced great sex yet
The glib point he's making is that you haven't gotten to see what's really out there so you think that the first thing you come across is the best. It's like trying out only one product and thinking it's the buest. However, you haven't checked out all the other products.
Yes, there are a lot of bad products out there, but there are couple of good ones as well. You have to accept that you're going to have to come across a couple of bad apples when you're searching for the good ones.
The same thing comes with Friends. There are people out there where it's quite clear that all they want is just to whore themselves around and pump up their Friends Lists. However, there are couple of good people out there whom you may run across through one of those Whore Train People.
When it comes to focusing on Quality Friends, you'll actually get better Quality if you have a higher Friends List Number. As bad as this may sound, you technically have more Influence on people when they see that you have more Friends.
True Discrimination
We all screen individuals. People like to believe that they never discriminate against others, but they forget what the True Definition of Discrimination is without the Negative Connotations that come with that word.
When you filter data with your eyes, your eyes naturally discriminate against things it sees. It's taking in so much information that it learns to focus and only see what it wants to see. If it tried to process everything, it would suffer Information Overload.
People should realize that there are a lot of ways to fool your senses in order to get you to add them. Usually the best the thing to do is check when the account was created by clicking on their Blog, but Coders are getting even sneakier with that by changing their Page Layout so it covers up that information.
Numbers are just Numbers. They really shouldn't mean anything, but Psychologically, it actually does play a role if you're going by "Majority Rules." People will do that where they will pay attention to how many Friends you currently have on your list and use that to judge what kind of person you are.
People may deny it, but haven't you ever noticed how people tend to adding people with under 50 people on their List? The people who have under 200 are usually scrutinized because people are trying to check out what kind of people they are and whether they're in it for the long haul.
When you have Friends Lists that are over 1,000 or 5,000, people tend to trust that you have some kind of stability or it's an indicator of longevity.
I've noticed that what some Webcam Chicks have been doing is putting the picture of a Hot Female on their List, pump up the List to over 5,000 and then they HAND OVER the List to a Web Cam Chick. I've seen this happen two times already.
It's sneaky and devious because people aren't paying attention. They've already added someone and usually because they've added so many people on their Whore Trains that they don't even notice the change.
It's sneaky in the sense that it's not why you originally added that individual. You added that person because you liked their pictures or some certain look or something appealing in their Profile and then you change it.
That just goes to show what's floating around online and why you should be careful or watchful. A lot of poeple don't pay attention to this stuff.
Number Lists Can Be Misleading
One thing I've noticed about people on MySpace is that they judge you by what they see on the surface:
- Page Layout
- Amount of Friends currently on your List
- Visiting your Blog Section to see when your Account was created
- Looking through your picture gallery to see if you use real pictures or are a Faker
Everything was all text-based and you had more access to information and could lift information off people more easily because there were fewer safety protocols to protect against hackers.
Some of the things I've seen on MySpace that fool people. They are sly Add Tactics I've seen that get people to add them:
- Hiding your Friends List Count
- Editing the Friends List Count to give another Number
- Not allowing people to view your Friends List
- MySpace Users that have over 3,000 - 5,000 Friends that generated by riding on "Whore Trains"
- Pumping up the Friends List to over 5,000 using an attractive female and then switching the account over to another girl
- Having people just click a link that says "Add Friend" without checking whom you're adding
- Having only the "Add Friend" Link and running multiple Add Accounts for one person that you can then split off into other accounts that will have thousands of friends
You'll get a whole bunch of people who get added to your List, but you don't know a lot of these people. If you just want to socialize, that's fine. However, if you think that having thousands of friends is a measure of self-worth, that's unhealthy and unrealistic.
That's how you get Socialites who have lots of people they socialize with but actually feel alone in a crowd. You get sucked into Peer Pressure because you have to live up to an image that people prescribe to you and then you find yourself trapped in that image of being what you think other people want you to be.
People may think I'm overanalyzing a simple MySpace User Add Concept, but it always starts out innocent and something little before it grows into a Monster that rages out of control. You'll see this in:
- Politics
- One innocent white lie
- Experimenting with drugs
- Trying alcohol
- Using painkillers
Business Model: Push and Pull Strategy
As a Business Analyst, I'm always comparing things to see if I can apply the same Business Model to it.
When it comes to Friends Lists, it's just like money. The more Friends you have to easier it is to attract people. The less friends you have, the harder it is.
People with small Friends Lists have to work hard at going getting people to add them on their Friends Lists while people who have some desirable trait easily attract them.
In Economics, this would be the Pull and Push Strategy:
PULL STRATEGY: People come to you and want to be added to your Friends List. You don't have to do anything except APPROVE or DENY them.
PUSH STRATEGY: That's when you have to go to people add ask to be added on their Friends List. You have to work at pushing your product into the market.
When it comes to the size of Friends Lists, the more Friends you have means the more you have to spread out your attention if you're trying to maintain your Friends.
WIth some people who are Beautiful Models, Celebrities, or have some noticeable trait that makes them attractive, they don't have to worry about losing friends.
For people who don't appear to have any attractive qualities aside from being a warm body, they're more likely to lose Friends over time.
I've seen that the Momentum of Friends Lists increases with Higher Numbers. Perhaps it's some allure of mystery when people wonder why someone has a lot of Friends.
Maybe people think that individual must possess some quality or something people want, which piques people's curiosity. So people who come across their pages will add them.
Personality Types Found on MySpace
Usually people attract friends by either being physically attractive, witty, or smart. Physically attractive people, especially women, have the easiest time attracting Friends. However, the down side is vulgar or lewd comments.
Witty or funny people will tend to attract other people who enjoy humor. That's where you rely on Personality to compensate for looks.
Intelligent people lure people in by proving that they're smart. If you do it in the correct way without coming off as arrogant about your Intelligence, you can gain people's respect or they'll defer to your Knowledge and Expertise.
Sometimes Attractive People are intrigued by Intelligent Individuals. Same with people who like humor. Though sometimes Intelligent People can come off as drab.
Usually Intelligent People and Funny People tend to have a falling out with other people when they reach higher numbers because it becomes more apparant as you hit Friends Lists with over 1,000 people that it's physically impossible to know or remember the people on your List.
Some people want to know that they're special and not just a number or "Belt on the Notch" of your Friends Lists, which is what a lot of people tend to do when they seek Friends Lists high numbers.
The whole Friends List aspect becomes more like a Video Game to see who can score the highest number of points by having the most friends.
I once ran across a MySpace Page where this attractive female with large boobs wrote in her profile that it was done out of a bet to see if she could get over 1,000 Friends in less than a week by showing off her boobs in her Picture Gallery.
Needless to say she won. It just goes to show there are a lot of horny men out there that are motivated to add women on their Friends Lists if they're scantily clad and showing off their assets.
That's an example of how men can pig out on Eye Candy. Eye Candy is really sweet and stimulates the pleasure centers of your brain, but it doesn't have any Intellectually nutritional value.
I've been around for a long time and what you see in this MySpace Phenomenon is really just another variation of how Sex sells in a Digital Medium.
Whore Train Economics
There have been a lot of "Whore Trains" circulating. Some people are ready to jump on the trail like it's a Rollecoaster while others turn their nose up at it because they think it's a cheap way of pumping up your Friends List with "Fake Friends."
Technically, that's true where the relationships you're developing by "whoring" yourself around like that aren't as solid. It's just number.
However, form a Marketing Perspective, that's what you do in Business. You go for QUANTITY and then you go for QUALITY. People may not like that approach toward MySpace Friends or Friends in general, but when it comes to Law of Averages, you have more options if you have more friends.
There's that scene in "When Harry Met Sally" where Harry Burns says something insulting to Sally Albright.
HARRY: Obviously, you haven't experienced great sex yet
The glib point he's making is that you haven't gotten to see what's really out there so you think that the first thing you come across is the best. It's like trying out only one product and thinking it's the buest. However, you haven't checked out all the other products.
Yes, there are a lot of bad products out there, but there are couple of good ones as well. You have to accept that you're going to have to come across a couple of bad apples when you're searching for the good ones.
The same thing comes with Friends. There are people out there where it's quite clear that all they want is just to whore themselves around and pump up their Friends Lists. However, there are couple of good people out there whom you may run across through one of those Whore Train People.
When it comes to focusing on Quality Friends, you'll actually get better Quality if you have a higher Friends List Number. As bad as this may sound, you technically have more Influence on people when they see that you have more Friends.
True Discrimination
We all screen individuals. People like to believe that they never discriminate against others, but they forget what the True Definition of Discrimination is without the Negative Connotations that come with that word.
When you filter data with your eyes, your eyes naturally discriminate against things it sees. It's taking in so much information that it learns to focus and only see what it wants to see. If it tried to process everything, it would suffer Information Overload.
People should realize that there are a lot of ways to fool your senses in order to get you to add them. Usually the best the thing to do is check when the account was created by clicking on their Blog, but Coders are getting even sneakier with that by changing their Page Layout so it covers up that information.
Numbers are just Numbers. They really shouldn't mean anything, but Psychologically, it actually does play a role if you're going by "Majority Rules." People will do that where they will pay attention to how many Friends you currently have on your list and use that to judge what kind of person you are.
People may deny it, but haven't you ever noticed how people tend to adding people with under 50 people on their List? The people who have under 200 are usually scrutinized because people are trying to check out what kind of people they are and whether they're in it for the long haul.
When you have Friends Lists that are over 1,000 or 5,000, people tend to trust that you have some kind of stability or it's an indicator of longevity.
I've noticed that what some Webcam Chicks have been doing is putting the picture of a Hot Female on their List, pump up the List to over 5,000 and then they HAND OVER the List to a Web Cam Chick. I've seen this happen two times already.
It's sneaky and devious because people aren't paying attention. They've already added someone and usually because they've added so many people on their Whore Trains that they don't even notice the change.
It's sneaky in the sense that it's not why you originally added that individual. You added that person because you liked their pictures or some certain look or something appealing in their Profile and then you change it.
That just goes to show what's floating around online and why you should be careful or watchful. A lot of poeple don't pay attention to this stuff.