To befriend or to "unfriend"

Right, so we have yet another new term, courtesy of the ever-sprawling Internet: Unfriend. That is, to remove a person as a friend from you extraordinarily sprawling social circle in the Kingdom of Facebook. Yes, my online spelling checker does not approve and neither do I. For one, "unfriend" is grammatically improper - un-friend implies "to friend" is a valid verb, which any proper English speaker will know it is not. "Friend" is a noun and has had sole claim to that part of speech for quite some time now. To befriend is the verb. To unfriend is neither this nor that. It's void not verb.

Now that I have driven home that point with a mallet, let us get on to the intended meaning of the grammatically unhappy term. Someone commented in an article in the NY Times of 29 January 2009 that a friends list of around a 100 persons implies an intimate circle of friends. A 100 persons? Intimate? Since when can one be intimate with a 100 persons? I can hardly keep up on normal terms with 10 and it would take some convincing that anyone else can do much better than that. I mean, I am a dedicated sort of person, you know.

But, now that I have blown my horn a bit, let us consider to be intimate or not to be intimate. Quite clearly there has been some dilution of intent here. Old story of modern times, I say. We dilute almost all things for faster gain at ever shrinking profit margins. Large turnover, small profit margin, that is. As if the experience of real close friendship can accumulate over many superficial friendships to some fat bottom line as in some business model from Harvard. What delusional rubbish!

So, should one prune the list or not prune the list? Well, it feels somewhat impolite to turn down a friend request on Facebook and rather insensitive to revoke a friend status. But then, turning down friendship happens in everyday life as part of the social code anyway. Ever since childhood one has known the feeling of being turned down by a group or a single person one would have liked to befriend. And one also stops being friends with some people. Perhaps, one should reconsider what "friend" means before applying or accepting friendship requests. It really means something more than just plain acquaintance or boasting numbers.

Hope

Hope. It is the enduring quality of humanity.

Hope, as the last morsel is served and the cupboard, bare.
Hope, as on coffin mix clots of earth with tears of grieve.
Hope, in the face of rejection.
Hope, in the depths of despair.

Hope, at the birth of life.
Hope, at the gates of death.

Hope, in the anguish of torture.
Hope, at the coming of freedom.

Hope, when all is lost.
Hope, when all is won.

Hope, when even faith and love have gone.

The Cure

Never Enough and his best mate called Why Can't I be You are in a bit of trouble these days. Money is tight. The big boys on the block have gone bust and sadly, these boys do cry. Lehman has gone kaput in a whimpering pile of corporate dust; J P Morgan; Goldman and the rest of them all went weeping on the collective shoulder of the American Congress for bail-outs from their respective silly trading sprees that collapsed with the overstretched mortgage loans that were embedded in their fantastic investment instruments. And now, it seems from reports in the NY Times that student credit is becoming something beyond a stress headache too. One does detect something of a bad habit somewhere in all the unravelling calamities.

Apparently, banks such as big boy Bank of America reach cosy deals with universities to offer credit cards to students. Fair enough, let a young person learn to use credit responsibly. That is the reassuring mantra of such arrangements. Sadly, the opposite outcome is more likely as is evident from past experience. Students end up with substantial ($2600 on average) debt on such cards and responsible spending flies out the window at card activation. It would be interesting to analyse the items on these card accounts to check for necessities as opposed to luxuries. One is inclined to bet on the latter being the predominant share of items. Bad habits often start from a young age and the worse case extrapolation resembles something like the current financial fiasco facing the USA and beyond: Endemic overspending and financial gluttony.

The UK public in particular is in a similar boat and developing countries such as South Africa and India have to restrict available credit in order to wean spending addicts in the growing middle class, facing an alarming increase in private insolvencies.

The cure? Well, my grand parents never had credit cards and never had shortage either. They never lived high but had their own homes and some money to spend on treats for their grand children over Christmas. In times of crisis it may help looking back at past wisdom. Alas, in today's mind such nostalgia is simply the wrong number. But it may just save us from overheating this world in more than one way.

[With apologies to The Cure].