If not for
Donath's reading and Week 6's lecture, I wouldn't have noticed how much I actually don't pay attention to friends on my facebook list that are not affiliated with any other friends or interests of mine. I went through my friends list and I must admit, 1 quarter of the list (of approximately 600 people) are people who I either went to secondary school with back in the days but was really never friends with them, or people on the other side of the world I've never met or have any reason to meet in the future. With the former, you'd think I'd have at least something else apart going to the same school in common, but really I don't, so they qualify as weak ties. With the latter, these set of people might have at least 5 friends in common with me (the only reason I accept their request), but these 5 (or more) friends in common are most likely those I'd met online and got to develop a degree of friendship with over time - virtually and offline (thanks to Skype, Instant Messaging, E-mail and phones).
To reiterate the term 'weak ties' for the lost one, weak ties are people on our friends list on social networking sites who we may never be close to, but through them, we can gain new insights and ideas, learn things and be in-the-know. This (apparently) gives us new forms of opportunities when we connect with these wider diversity of people. Personally, this doesn't apply to me, and I know a lot of people it doesn't apply to either. Not all weak ties are constantly engaged in the act of 'fashioning' - that is, not all of them are consistent and up-to-date with facebook and its features. In fact, I don't have much weak ties that frequently update their pages or engage in multiple social interactions, I find this odd because you'd expect the opposite, as in, the outgoing stranger who add you is most likely looking for new friends to include in his/her social grooming habit. This being the opposite in my case, this is why I rarely notice people I have nothing in common with, but are on my pals list.
So if I don't notice them, how exactly does this idea of weak ties as a way of gaining insights apply to me? 'Me' here represents an imagined group of people whose weak ties are also almost obscure. I must however acknowledge the very small group of weak ties that are only an exception in this argument because they have something to offer. That is, the aspiring musicians, writers, fan groups, activists, and so on. I find what they all have to post or say interesting, but that's only just a small number. What about the 1/4 people silently sitting in my list? Surely I cannot delete them, surely they probably don't know I exist, I'm actually curious to start getting to know them, but for now, there's no advantage, no signals, no grooming, nothing that connects us together in any verbal or textual way. Do I have the time? Of course, that's the beauty of SNS addiction... a semi-addict like me can always make time for facebook and social grooming. Do I have the resources? Yes, thanks to facebook's constant useful new features, for instance, the side box that instructs you to "Say Hello to *insert the name of someone passive on your friends list* ". And the 'Chat' (which I never use though).
Long ranting short, how influential are my weak ties on my experience online daily? On a scale of 0 to 10, I'd say a 1 (and a half).
