Is Social Media a Popularity Contest

I saw an episode of South Park the other day that kind of made me laugh. I’m not a fan of the show, and I don’t usually even watch, but it happened to be on. Oh, and I’m a sucker for social media humor. One of my favorite episodes of Always Sunny in Philadelphia (a show I do actually like) was the “Anti-Social Network.” If you missed it, you’ve got to check it out on Hulu… It’s hysterical.

Anyway, back to South Park. I didn’t watch the whole show, so I won’t even try to do an episode recap, but let’s just say there were “friending” and “unfriending” issues. One of the characters (not a main character) was said to be so lonely that he doesn’t even have one Facebook friend. The plot went on from there, but I just love when shows point out how ridiculous we sometimes act.

People shouldn’t judge you in real life based on how many Facebook friends you have, but they do. People also shouldn’t join “Add me” groups and add thousands of strangers to their page in an attempt to seem more popular, but they do. Ever since the early days of Myspace, social media has been somewhat of a popularity contest. Personally, I have under 100 Facebook friends because I like to keep it to people I actually know (and kind of even like).

But, I see others getting caught up with thousands of “friends.” Really? Do you really have four thousand friends? Your birthday parties must be super expensive. And you probably need to hire a police officer to work the door. But on the other hand, I guess you get an obscene amount of gifts, right?