way
to get both. Instead I ended up with a journey
filled with horror, intrigue, and a dastardly
murder plot so dastardly, even the most dastardly
of dastardly people couldn't come up with something
this dastardly.
Okay, so what really happened
was I got a whole bunch of e-mails, but the dastardly
stuff sounded more dramatic.
I accomplished both my goals.
It was funny in how seriously some people took
what I was doing. Hopefully you've perused the
hate mail section on my website by now. If you
haven't yet, let me sum it up for you: a lot of
stupid people have access to the internet.
Some people got offended--really
offended--that I sent them an unsolicited friend
request. "How dare you disturb my thousand
year slumber!," they'd bellow. Of course,
I'm paraphrasing.
Really, I was told I had too much
time on my hands and got a whole bunch of invitations
to have sex with myself. If I could have sex with
myself, don't you think I'd have less time on
my hands?
For the most part, the response
was overwhelmingly positive. Some people checked
my profile every day. Some e-mailed all their
friends about what I was doing. Some even helped
me confirm all the friend requests I was getting.
Which all added up to one thing: I'm not the only
one with too much time on my hands.
I'm kidding. What it really added
up to is that human nature involves a desire to
be a part of something bigger than yourself. And
that's what this quest was to a lot of people.
It was a large, fun way to have an ice breaker.
I got hundreds of emails talking about how I was
the subject of conversation at a party or on a
road trip or in an e-mail. What it came down to
was that people wanted to help because of the
feeling of community, and because none of us has
yet to figure out how to have sex with ourselves.
On the flip side, I also figured
out why others hated it. Some people don't just
want to be involved in something bigger - they
want to be involved in something bigger that they
own. And thus, the majority of people who sent
me hate mail didn't hate the idea of what I was
doing; they hated that I was the one to do it.
So much so that there are now several dozen people
on The Facebook trying to duplicate what I did.
I happened to check my friend
count when I was at 99,999. So I hit reload, and
sure enough, I saw it at exactly 100,000. I don't
know who that 100,000th was. But thank you, whoever
you are. May you live a long happy life, and eventually
be flexible enough to have sex with yourself.
There were no balloons, and no
band played. But I did get a nice sense of satisfaction
that I did what I set out to do and I could go
back to my life. Which coincidentally consists
mainly of answering emails and coming up with
zany quests.
I wanted to thank everyone who
helped, be it actively or by simply clicking "confirm."
Especially the staff of The Facebook, who let
me use their product to perform a simultaneous
social experiment and publicity campaign. I also
want to, once again, make fun of all the people
who had to ask who I am despite the caption on
my picture explaining, well, who I am. For those
of you that did this, I want to explain that Clark
Kent and Superman are the same person, since you
might have missed that one, too.
I do have good news, as promised.
This September, director Andrew Hevia will be
screening his documentary about my quest in Tallahassee.
This October, I'll be taping my first TV special
in Atlanta. And later this month, I will be having
a big party for all the facebookers that want
to come in Los Angeles. And I just saved a bunch
of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico.
(I'll also be doing shows in lots of other places,
but this is supposed to be an 800-word column.)
I will continue to add friends,
and answer all the messages I've gotten. I also
branched out. I have 4,000 friends on ConnectU
and 8,000 on MySpace. But I will always have a
place in my heart for the 100,000 from The Facebook.
Right next to my left ventricle.
Steve
Hofstetter is the author of the Student Body Shots
books, which are available at SteveHofstetter.com.
He can be e-mailed at steve@stevehofstetter.com.
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