Is there such a thing as too many Myspace friends?

Is there such a thing as too many Myspace friends?

The first question that would have to be asked before determining how many Myspace friends is 'too many friends' is to determine the definition of Myspace friends. If you accept the definition of a friend as one with whom you share an emotional connection, then you would be hard pressed to count too many people with whom you connect on Myspace alone as friends.

If Myspace friends are a special type of 'friend' that connects in the same way as a casual wave to a classmate in school or a pen pal in snail mail days then it puts an entirely different light on the question. When you see individuals on the internet who contact thousands of people who also have Myspace sites in order to ask them to sign up as friends, one wonders what the purpose of this friendship is. Is it perhaps a contest to see how many connections can be made--in this case, you can hardly call this a friendship, it is simply a way to collect names.

If one were to take an autograph book and go into a football stadium and ask everyone to sign the book those would be contacts, but hardly friends. If you look at this type of number volume for individuals who are 'Myspace friends' then clearly there can be no emotional connection with all these individuals. However, by the same token, since there is no emotional connection, it really doesn't matter how many names are listed on the Myspace site as Myspace friends.

By simple arithmetic of the number of minutes in a day and the length of time it takes to connect with the offline friend, it would seem apparent that there comes a point where there are too many friends for a person to keep track of and maintain the emotional connection.

So, the short answer to the above question is "Yes, there can be too many Myspace friends, but it doesn't matter because they aren't really friends at all, simply names associated with a web site."