By Buford Stetson
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – A press release regarding the relationship between the amount of fan pages a Facebook user has and the amount of friends they have was recently revealed. No, not Facebook friends. Real friends. This groundbreaking study revealed something that few could foresee: the more pages a Facebook user is a fan of, the less friends they will have in real life.
While the study did not cite specific reasons for this relationship, this Flipside reporter was willing to dig deep into the lives of true aficionados to discover just why this is true. And the results were shocking. Apparently people don’t like their live feed to consist of meaningless information about a complete stranger. “John Greenberg has become a fan of ‘bubble wrap.’” Well thank the lord. I thought for a minute that John Greenberg wasn’t a fan of bubble wrap. And I thought for a minute that John Greenberg didn’t feel the need to confess this love on the internet. And I thought for a minute that I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night, knowing that John Greenberg didn’t share my love for bubble wrap. But since John Greenberg is a fan of bubble wrap, I can breathe easy. This Flipside reporter would like to propose a new fan page: “I hate it when people become fans of everything on Facebook.” Although, becoming a fan of that page would be a bit hypocritical. Scratch that.
This Flipside reporter would like to propose a newer fan page: “I hate it when people become fans of everything of Facebook, yet recognize the paradox created by joining this group.”
Additionally, a cause between the lack of friends of those with 100+ fan pages can be traced to their incentive for becoming fans of so many things. While it could be contended that these people simply like a lot of things, or that they want to support as many causes as possible, let’s be honest. They become fans of so many things because they don’t have a life. So they waste their time on Facebook, trying to associate with the whimsical pleasures of fellow cyber teens. It’s a logical thought process, really. What better way to feel cool than to know that 10,000 others also love “The guy who screams CHOCOLATE! on Spongebob.” Thus this relationship between fan pages and friends really shouldn’t have been to shocking; people who waste their time on Facebook and annoy everyone around them usually aren’t the life of the party.
I, however, would like to propose a new correlation that is far more radical: The more Facebook friends someone has, the fewer friends they have in real life. I talked to Junior Kyle Bernstein about the issue, who has an impressive 1,894 Facebook friends. When I asked him what he was doing this weekend, Bernstein responded, “Probably going on Facebook…”
