Six degrees of separation

Posted by on 2011 Sep 24, Sat in Technology / programming, Thoughts, Society, Jokes

Many moons ago, if you happened to see a nice girl, it would take many weeks of "hanging out in the same area" at different times of the day, hoping that chance would intersect your paths again.

You would ruminate on that memory of her fading in and out of your view. You would keep guessing and imagining who she is, what she does and what kind of music she prefers.

And maybe... maybe, if you were a good guy (take the trash out, keep the house clean, do your homework and help your neighbors), the planets would align in your favour and you'd get the chance to have another glance at her fair face.

***

All you have to do today is sift your friends' photographs and look for that charming smile.

You will shortly find out her name and see that you have 19 friends in common. In 10 minutes you will know which other countries she visited, which movies she likes, where she studied, where and with whom she works.

If you get lucky (I did), she'll show up at the top of your news-feed, tagged in the photo of someone you know.

After a few more clicks, you might even see a pic of her handsome boyfriend and discover that she's friends with the people you were in a relationship with :-)

Welcome to the present! Mwahahaha!

4 comments

Comment from: atercattus Visitor

The bad thing about it is that you’ll be probably bored of her by the time you’ll scroll down her friends list; you will know every thing about her and she’ll be no mistery for you so there will be no point in trying to meet her (couse you allready know her), in trying to get in the same place at the same time (couse you now can just add her to your frinds list and forget that she even existed).
Nice story!

Comment from: gr8dude Member

On the bright side - people with interesting personalities are like an iceberg - you only see the tip.

You will have to meet them if you want to know them better.

The focus of the story is in the fact that social networks can prematurely kill a potential relationship, because many of us tend to give up easily.

I wonder how difficult it will be for our children to survive in these extremely harsh info-environments - everything will be easy to find out. Will they be curious? Will they have to guess? Will they have to hope?

Or will they just look it up and get an instant answer…

Comment from: atercattus Visitor

Well, that’s the risk we’ll have to assume if we want “progress”

Comment from: gr8dude Member

I’m pretty sure they’ll figure something out. All we have to do is offer them a decent education.

Form is loading...