I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook.
It is after all a social networking site.
We can receive flowers, teddy bears, winnie the poohs, hugs, LV bags and chocolates.
In return we can ‘buy’ someone we desire or vote him as the sexiest man on earth.
It gives me error messages saying they can’t load my profile.
The list of requests get longer.
My last count…293 requests.
The numbers keep increasing.
Lately, I have been receiving ‘pokes’ from strangers.
I seldom ‘poke’ back.
In fact, rarely coz I don’t want to give the poker the wrong idea.
You poke only when you know the person fairly well.
You don’t poke at any Tom, Dick or Harry.
There are some who completely skip the poking ‘protocol’.
They send me a ‘add friend’ request immediately.
Usually I would ignore the request if I see a face I have not seen.
This happens after they have perused and found me inside their friend’s friend list.
But in this age and time, not everyone puts a face to his name like I do.
Some have a cartoon character, some have a scenery picture, others have a plain question mark.
How do I know who is who?
Yet sometimes it turns out some strangers are in fact, long lost friends.
I don’t open up completely unless I treat you as my inner circle.
For that reason, I’m seen as aloof or cool.
My iceman exterior is a mask to protect myself from the outside world.
For this reason, I mostly ignore the ‘add friend’ request if he turns out to be a stranger.
Instead, I will drop him a ‘love note’ asking him to jolt my memory if we met before.
Most, if not all, will never reply as they don’t know what to say.
For the brave few who reply, here’s a sample of what they write.
“I find you cute.”
“I like your abs.”
Lame excuses.
I want you to like me because of who I am.
My character.
Not because of my looks.
For those strangers whom I add, it’s usually after a decent length of email exchange.
I need to get to know the person well enough to add him,
less he is left to hibernate in my inbox indefinitely.
I don’t want to add for the sake of adding or increasing numbers.
Quality is more important than quantity.
What’s the point of having an ever increasing list when you hardly know each person?
It’s like seeing yet another face in the sea of faces.
It’s like having another digit in the number system.
Perhaps we are all searching for our soulmate to arrive.
And the more hopeful one is, the more persistent he will be in search of this.
You never know when a relationship starts to bloom from friendship.
In lonely times like these, we seek solace in each other.
As fishermen, we can harvest far and wide.
The world is now our oyster.
But one fundamental question remains.
Will I give you the chance?
