Facebook Friends List Upgrade

I decided to upgrade my Facebook Friends List. I have only about twenty folks on the list and every one of them is a ex-classmate from high school, some forty years ago. Just looking at my Facebook Friends list, if a person didn’t know any better, he’d swear I must have lived in a cave for the last several decades. If I saw a friends list with no neighbors, no co-workers, just long-ago classmates, that‘s what I‘d think too. Don’t get me wrong, Facebook friend and ex-classmate Bob Sayre is an entertaining guy, but c’mon. So anyhow, I made up my mind that I needed a few Facebook friends from the new millennium.

I decided I'd put a few celebrities on my friends list. Celebrities would give the list some panache. I figured I’d start out with Richard Gere. I chose Richard because he is about my age and he probably lives in Southern California somewhere. I’ve been in that area once or twice and I thought it would be nice if Richard would put me up for a night or two if I were in town. I mean, isn’t that what friends do? Then it occurred to me that if he were ever in Columbus he might want to save some money on motels by staying with me. A single occupant at the nearby Red Roof Inn is now around $50. And Richard hasn‘t had a megahit in a while. Anyway, though my condo is not overly spacious, I figured that it would be okay for Richard to stay over. I have one bed and a couch, and for a night or two I‘d be willing to relinquish the bed and take the couch. We would be friends, after all.

So after going through the pros and cons, I entered the name “Richard Gere” into the Facebook search engine. Well, I must have found fifty Richard Geres, all with his photo as the primary profile photo that is seen on the search list. Either Richard had a lot of Facebook accounts or there were a lot of Gere phonies out there. Worse, the first ten or so were not really personal Facebook pages but kind of “fan sites”. And rather than the standard “friend request” option, these sites had a “Like” button with a “thumbs up” icon. Well of course I didn’t like. You see, I was trying to offer my Facebook friendship.

I thought that the Facebook Richard Gere might be an anomaly so I entered the name George Clooney instead. I surmised that he would be almost as good as Richard Gere. My ancient computer took a few seconds to work and for that brief moment I had visions of George, Brad Pitt, and myself sitting front row at a Lakers game, Jack Nicholson seated not far away. But Clooney’s Facebook search results were very similar to the results I’d found for Richard Gere; some Facebook fan sites and a number of dubious George Clooney personal pages.

I figured maybe I was shooting too high. Maybe I ought to take the position that if Gere and Clooney want to be my Facebook friend, they can request the friendship on my Facebook page.

Anyway, slightly annoyed, I pushed my chair back from my desk and turned my eyes onto the PBS program on the TV in my computer room. There was Neil Tyson, the amiable host of Nova. He was eloquently describing the formation of Saturn’s rings. Then I thought, Crap, why not see if Tyson could be a Facebook friend? He's a noted scientist. That's almost as good as a Hollywood star.

Quickly I put in his name, Neil Tyson, into the Facebook search engine then waited as my old computer churned. I discovered that low and behold, Neil Tyson had an “official” Facebook webpage. Official, so I knew it was probably really his. Not only that, he referred to himself on the page as “I” and “me” rather than by name, as was the case with Clooney and Gere on their respective Facebook pages. Yeah, this was the guy to be added to my Facebook friend list, no doubt about it.

Then I saw where Neil Tyson already had almost 5,000 Facebook friends. I can’t say that I was too thrilled by the idea of being just one of 5,000. It also meant that Tyson was not especially discriminate or prudent in who he selected as a Facebook friend. But then I thought, heck, why not go ahead and click on the ADD AS FRIEND button. Why should I worry about Tyson not being particularly choosy when it comes to Facebook friends, after all, I’m living proof that I have about twenty ex-classmates who aren’t.