The Results are In!

I don't know how, but I almost forgot about the study I was conducting. I conducted a survey on my Facebook "friends" on October 5, 2011, and I've had the results folded up and concealed in my room somewhere for about a month now. I guess it's about time that show my findings. I am aware that you all know how much I dislike Facebook, but this survey actually has nothing to do with my hatred for the site. The survey shows how much my life has changed over the past four years, basically since I entered college. So take a moment to rejoice over the fact that I am not going negative Nancy on social networking, and you should all thank Chase Robertson for this because he is helping me cease to post as such a negative prick so often. Also you should go check out his blog and his latest article because both kick ass. But don't forget your shark repellent.

Do not leave home without it

The reason I started this study was because of my curiosity in how much interaction I actually have with my "friends." One of the good things I found is that I have never spoken with only three people on my friends list. I think that is an impressive number and I am willing to bet that most people have way more than three "friends" that they have never said one word to. I must add that this is out of 343 people, too. I know that's nothing compared to everyone else's 4,393,454 "friends," but don't try to tell me you haven't spoken with less than 1% of those people ( I used math here, 3/343 is 0.87463557%). I had to conduct the actual number generation for this study in one day (I can assure you it was as long as my.... index finger!) because of the changes in "friends" total. No I'm not popular and have an increasing total daily, I usually have less "friends" each time I log in. This doesn't bother me because I probably would not consider myself a friend of those people anyway. What I find comical is the actual process. In my case, I just don't care enough to even do that. Sure I have people on my friends list that I don't really consider to be my friend, but I sure as hell don't take the time to go remove them. I have better shit to do, like blogging for instance. I am currently sitting here, at my computer, imagining people going through their friends list deleting people. What an interesting process: here's so-and-so, they're cool so they can stay. He's cool, she's cool... wait a minute, so-and-so. Fuck them! It's such a deliberate process that I find amusing.

I held off making a Facebook profile until May of my senior year of high school. Once I got my college e-mail address I decided to create it. Upon creating the profile I friended one person: my sister. She was already attending her second year of college across the country and I thought Facebook would be a good way to stay in touch with her. If only I knew then what I was getting into (cue flashes of Holden Caulfield thoughts... if you don't get it, I feel like everyone is superficial/fake on Facebook... and if you still don't get it, then never mind). I had a good group of friends in high school and they began to add me and I added some of them. Again, I thought this was great because I would have a medium of communication with people I wasn't going to see on the regular basis that I was used to. I actually enjoyed Facebook at this point in time because it was serving the purpose I was looking for. Freshman year of college and a bit into sophomore year, Facebook was great. I did keep in touch with my friends while adding new ones I met in college and our friendships remained relatively good and strong. Sometime during sophomore year and quickly escalating during junior year, Facebook's good use evaporated for me. I attribute this to the lack of time I actually spend hanging out with my friends anymore. Actually, never mind hanging out, I don't even see my friends anymore.

As of October 5, 2011, I had 343 "friends" on Facebook. I conducted a study to discover just how much interaction I have with these "friends" currently and what I think about these "friends." The results I found backed up my thoughts. I really do feel like I don't see people anymore and that's what I found. Actually, it's not only that I don't see many of my friends anymore, I rarely even communicate with them at all. I guess I should describe the different facets of the study conducted. The study consists of four areas of focus and a subgroup of answers for each particular person involved in the study. The four areas and subgroups:

1. Last time I have spoken with (insert "friend")

• Today
• Within a week
• Within a month
• This year
• More than a year
• Never

2. How often I hangout with (insert "friend")

• Often
• Sometimes
• Rarely
• Never

3.Friend Label (who doesn't like labels?)

• Close friends (notice the lack of quotations surrounding the word friends here)
• Teammate
• Family
• Coworker
• Don't know why we're "friends" (quotations!)
• Friend
• Acquaintance

4. How I feel about (insert "friend")

• I like you
• Neutral
• I don't like you
• I hate you
• Depends
• I don't know

The simplicity of the study combined with the stunning realizations it brings about make it a study I think we should all perform. So on October 5, I embarked on the data collection! On October 5, I spoke with 21 of my "friends" at some point during that day and spoke with 15 more within that week, for a total of 36 (21+15) throughout the whole week. That number isn't too bad, at least I don't think so, given that I'm at college and people have stuff to do. What I found very alarming is that I have not spoken to 169 of my "friends" in over a year! That's very nearly half of the list of people. While at first that number is alarming, after further consideration I realized that I don't care. Out of those 169 people, only about two or three would actually have any impact on me. In other words, there are only about two or three of those people that I would like to still have communication with. Also, as I stated previously, there are only three people that I have never spoken with. I really believe that many people cannot say the same about their "friends."

I should have made this a category

One thing that's great is that I have a few of the greatest friends that I could ask for. I like this part, too, because I get to label people! I have come to the conclusion that I have seven close friends, which I think is a good amount. These are the people I have very frequent communication with over various medians. For instance, Chase Robertson goes to school the furthest away from me out of all my friends (notice the lack of quotations again), but I actually communicate with him the most without a doubt. In fact, over the last month or so I've had communication with him just about everyday and it's great! This is possible because we don't always use the same mode of communication. First off, we both still use AIM. I really like AIM because it works very well. AIM lets you instant message your friends without any lag and I have never experienced one issue with the service. I really think it's too bad that so few people use it anymore. Chase and I also speak with one another while at school from time to time via Xbox Live. This is really fun because we can game and have sweet conversations at the same time! And of course, we use text each other and that works very well, too.

As you can tell by acquainting yourself with the design of this study, I did not make any differentiation between males and females. However, I can tell you that out of the seven close friends I have, six are guys and one is a girl. This result also did not surprise me, and really it shouldn't because anyone should know who their close friends are. Also, I must add that I did not include any family members as close friends. Personally, I have historically spent way more time hanging out with other guys. I don't really have a precise reason for this, but I think it is just because of the way I am wired. I know a lot of guys, including a few of my roommates that try to get all the girls they can. I just don't think that way. I only want one girl, not a different one every night. I don't know why I am like that, but I've just always been that way and I think that is why I only have one female friend that I consider a close friend. I also have no problem with this because I am happy with the seven people who are always there to speak to about practically anything. I've tried to include more people in this closer circle of friends, but it has only really worked out with a very small group. It makes for one hell of a group, though! The funny thing is that of these seven people, I only hangout with four of them on a regular basis. The four of you know who you are. As for the other three, there are certain circumstances that prohibit hanging out to some extent, but I can see the number of often hangouts increasing by at least one in a relatively short amount of time. I won't tell you why, though, life's no fun without mystery.

Chase and I should add this to our communication devices 

I'm always hanging out with the same people though. The nice thing is that I have that one core group that I hangout with often. This group is mainly comprised of the great friendships I developed before and during high school and with a couple people at college. What I found interesting is that the study says that I only hangout with 23 people with some regularity. That means that the other 320 people I barely ever hangout with. This brings up a funny point that I only recently have come to realize. One thing about me is I really enjoy running around like a lunatic. This is why I run track and like to play pickup games of ultimate Frisbee and soccer. All of these things involve running around and I love it! The realization that I came to is that I have a group of friends back home that I only see when we play Frisbee. There is nothing wrong with that, but it's just funny that I practically have no other interaction with these people unless we are playing Frisbee. And now that we are all getting older, people are becoming lazier and we don't play as much. So now we only play very sparingly and that is probably why I find myself very rarely hanging out with a more diverse crowd.

 For some reason I usually find myself getting along quite well with people that are older than me. For instance, in college I always hung out with people one grade above me. I use the past tense here, because I am still in college, but they are not. This year has been strange for me because all these people that I used to hangout with are just simply not here anymore. The hangout number is also very low because it is so hard to get people to do anything. I struggle all summer, or I used to because I don't really try anymore, to get people together to hangout. The excuses are just unbearable. I can understand if you can't hangout all the time, but some people have an excuse everyday. How is everyday someone in your family's birthday? You study every second that you're not in class? Why are you always busy? The busy excuse, so classic in every sense of the word, makes me laugh. Whether I'm trying to hangout with people or just talk to them, the busy excuse always gets me. Who isn't busy? I go to college, too, and I run track, but look at this, I still find time to do shit like blog! People who constantly tell me they're busy are the same people that I stop inviting to do things. It's not that I don't like these people, I just stop doing it because it's a waste of my time. There are people I know/used to know that I would absolutely enjoy hanging out with/talking to from time to time, but they have just pushed me away (intentionally or unintentionally, it doesn't really matter) to the point where I just don't bother anymore.

One thing that I am very happy to report after conducting this study is that there is no one on my friends list that I hate. I did not make one single tally in that section. In fact I reported that I like 155 of my "friends." I do realize that only comes out to 45.189504%, but I found myself answering "I don't know" for many people, either because I don't know them all that well or because I haven's seen them in such a long time that I really don't know. People can change, so for all I know someone could have become a complete jackass. Of course the opposite could have happened, too.

Basically what I found confirmed my beliefs. I've thought for quite some time now that I always see and hangout with the same people. I don't mind because I like the people I associate with, but it does show a transition in my life. As I get older, lots of bonds have broken, but the ones that remain have grown even stronger and I believe they will last. I don't bother to add people on Facebook anymore because I find it rather worthless and pointless. It's not like I communicate with anyone on there anyways. I haven't sent out a friend request in over a year now and I'm not Facebook friends with some people that I see and interact with on a daily basis. I know this might be confusing to some people, but yes I am friends with  people who are not my Facebook friends.

I think that if I had conducted this study sometime during freshman year of college, the results would have been very different. I used to stay in touch with many more of my friends back then, but they are not only to blame for the lack of communication lately. I'll be honest here, I make very little effort to communicate. I text about four of my friends with some regularity, AIM with two almost daily, and no longer use Facebook as a communication device. I no longer use Facebook as a communication tool because I don't like the lack of privacy. With each "update" (I would call it a downdate because it gets worse each time), Facebook becomes less private. I do realize that people could see what you had "written on someone's wall" before, but now there is a stream on the right side of the homepage that tells all your "friends" when you do anything. I look at and this is what it looks like:

So-and-so commented on so-and-so's picture
So-and-so commented on so-and-so's wall post on so-and-so's wall
So-and-so likes some stupid shit
So-and-so commented on so-and-so's wall post on so-and-so's wall
So-and-so likes some stupid shit
So-and-so likes so-and-so's pointless status
So-and-so commented on so-and-so's pointless status
So-and-so commented on so-and-so's pointless status
So-and-so added 2,394,902 pictures to the album "What happened last night?"
So-and-so liked so-and-so's picture
So-and-so posted on so-and-so's wall
So-and-so likes some stupid shit
So-and-so commented on so-and-so's post on so-and-so's wall
So-and-so commented on so-and-so's picture
So-and-so updated their status to song lyrics
So-and-so commented on so-and-so's picture
So-and so likes some stupid shit
So-and-so added 4,328 pictures to the album "Who put those handcuffs on?"
So-and-so commented on so-and-so's status (by adding the next line in the song)
So-and-so likes some stupid shit
So-and-so is now friends with so-and-so
So-and-so likes some stupid shit
So-and-so commented on so-and-so's wall post on so-and-so's wall
So-and-so commented on so-and-so's status (added another line to the song)
So-and-so is attending some stupid shit
So-and-so liked so-and-so's status
So-and-so commented on so-and-so's wall post on so-and-so's wall
So-and-so likes some stupid shit

If you don't get it, Facebook broadcasts everything to everyone. Not only do I not care about a single one of these events, but I would also not like my "friends" to be aware of everything I do. I also believe I state at the beginning of this post that I would not bash Facebook right now, but I think you can see where I'm coming from. I rarely ever write on anyone's wall anymore because Facebook broadcasts to everyone that you did so. If I really want to get in touch with someone I message them. I will also add that I don't do this with many people, so these people are in a special category and they know who they are.

With all this said, I would be more than happy to reconnect with any of my lost friends. I think I will at some point, too. I can' say why, but I have a feeling. The end of the semester is approaching, it's almost Thanksgiving and not long after that is winter break. I hope to see some old friends over this period of time, especially this year because I don't know what my life will be like a year from now. I might have a job, and if I do, where I will be located I know not. My friends might have jobs, too! There is a good possibility that I will not be on the same school schedule that I've grown accustomed to over the past sixteen years, I guess. As for the people I know I am going to see over the break, I think we will have some fun. Chase and I have some good ideas about possible mini-movies to make and put up on YouTube. I really hope these come to fruition, it might be a way to get Retentive Gibberish out of it's current recession.

Well, here are the complete results of the study, and you should conduct it yourself!


Last Time Spoke With

• Today                                                             21 (6.122%)
• Within a week                                                 15 (4.373%)
• Within a month                                                43 (12.536%)
• This year                                                         90 (26.239%)
• More than a year                                           169 (49.271%)
• Never                                                               3 (0.874%)

Hangout with

• Often                                                                4 (1.166%)
• Sometimes                                                      19 (5.539%)
• Rarely                                                             61 (17.784%)
• Never                                                           259 (75.510%)

Friends Label

• Close friends                                                    7 (2.041%)
• Teammate                                                      17 (4.956%)
• Family                                                            14 (4.081%)
• Coworker                                                      11 (3.206%)
• Don't know why we're "friends"                      72 (20.991%)
• Friend                                                            55 (16.034%)
• Acquaintance                                                167 (48.688%)

How I feel about you:

• I like you                                                       155 (45.189%)
• Neutral                                                            57 (16.618%)
• I don't like you                                                 12 (3.498%)
• I hate you                                                          0 (0.000%)
• Depends                                                          33 (9.621%)
• I don't know                                                    86 (25.072%)

I think it is only fitting to end this post with a quote from a literary legend, Bilbo Baggins:

"I don't know half of you as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."