Add me, add me not.

I enjoy social networking sites because it makes you realize how long and varied the arms of friendship you have established. It also makes you realize people are connected in many ways. The first one I ever signed up for way back in the mid 90s was sixdegrees.com. At that time, the internet was only beginning to flourish in the Philippines so not a lot of my friends were that much into it yet, so the people I connected with were mostly in the US and 'nerds' from different countries who owned computers and were used to subscribing to electronic bulletin boards and chat servers. Six Degrees started charging after a while so I didn't renew my subscription.

A decade later, I can't even count how many free networking sites I am a member of and I can hardly keep up. I get so many persistent invitations to connect with a certain set of friends from different times in my life that I eventually sign up for it. It's always fun to reconnect and know that when you want to reach out to someone, they are only a mouse-click away.

Once in a while though, I get these questionable add-me notices or requests from men that I don't know from Adam. Reading the profile of some can be quite entertaining, and sometimes a little uncomfortable, because you know that they're there for one purpose - and that is to pick-up people. Of course, I just try to ignore these requests and not respond lest I draw more unwanted attention. It can be exasperating though.

I guess there's always going to be a downside to a good thing, huh?