My Buddy Network

I take great pride in the expansive network of people I've built up in the past twenty-something years. As far as I am concerned I was (and luckily still am) able to connect with a lot of different, valuable, intelligent people with good stories, extraordinary characters and/or immaculate skills. Every single one of them filled a gap, a need at that point in time (no matter how small), and for that I am grateful.

However these people and the relationships I keep with them must be managed meticulously. This involves, but is not exclusive to:

• remembering birthdays (MY DEEPEST APOLOGIES)
• coming over for babyshowers
• helping people move
• keeping track of your friends' friends names
• going out together for dinner or clubbing
• having lunch/espresso together
  

As you can see this is already a huge list; nevermind that you still need to eat, sleep, do the chores, do the groceries, take out the dog, work and pay the bills, and go on vacation every once in a while.

Unfortunately the cost of not maintaining your relationships is... well... they stall and wither basically.

This is where internet fulfils a demand: without having to call, write, visit anyone anymore you can still stay in touch with the likes of Hyves, Hi5, Orkut, MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, even this Blogger. Anyone is updated about current affairs, current job, and what you ate last night. If you move, you don't need to send a forwarding address by post (soooooo 1980s): just leave a message on your profile page and people are up to date very quickly...

At least, if they take the effort of actually looking at your profile!

I do think this stuff helps save time in keeping relationships up-to-date. It persists relationships you had at one point in time, and keeps them safe for all-time. It prevents you from losing contact altogether... Otherwise you get these awkward e-mails from people from the past who are hesitant to contact you because it's been so long since you last spoke.

Of course this also allows for situations where you just want someone's name in your list for the sake of it ("yes the PM of the Netherlands is in my Hyves friends list!!"), or you get someone's name in your network whom you don't want there ("oh no the President of the USA is in my Hyves friends list!!"). Wonder if the police do their relationships audit on-line as well... I might have to remove some of these people very fast...

Truthfully, some relationships are worth keeping, even after a long bloody time. There's even a television genre for this: emo-television (cf. "Vermist", "Het Spijt Me").

Relationships should take time as far as I am concerned. These sites cannot account for everything, they should not replace the very limited interactions we already have with one another. And that is something I fear we are doing. We are getting complacent about meeting each other ("I don't need to see this guy now, I read his blog and he's doing fine."). Also we are alienating a lot of people who still don't want anything to do with internet (grandma, great-uncle Pete, Greenpeace Jill and so on). Only Sandi Thom can say (sing) it better than I can.

I myself do have an on-line presence, simply because my phone bill is far too high as it is, I cannot fly off to everywhere on a moment's notice and finally I cannot clone myself to attend two events occuring at the same time. So look me up on Hyves or on LinkedIn. (And of course, you already found the blog...)

Privacy, schmivacy. I'm not getting into politics anyway.