MySpace Memetics

“Shhh… So I was on myspace today and I have 2200 Friends. But I started to think about all the people out there with very few friends. People who might be feeling lonely. So, we have to adopt someone.
– ze Frank”

ze Frank proposed lending the numerical weight of the Sports Racer community to a few fairly friendless MySpace cadets. After a lengthy nominating process, three people were selected and yesterday they began to receive a flood of invitations from ze’s friendly fan base qua community. responses from the adoptees have included:

• The Null response. Looks like Adam hasn’t logged on for a few days. Won’t he be surprised to find a mailbox full of spam!
• The Considered response. Jess appears to be sorting through the pile of mail and adding friends that interest her. She has over fifty friends now, but hasn’t commented on the deluge of invitations.
• The Amused response. John isn’t going to add you if you’re not a woman between the ages of 24 and 32 who lives in the south of England. Even so, John has been the most engaged with the entire thing, providing plenty of feedback and opening his blog to comments so the conversation isn’t one sided. (Update: the 24 to 32 demographic isn’t concrete. He has just added lovely Sarah from Suffolk who claims to be nineteen.)

Here is the comment I left for John…

I chuckled at ze Frank’s social software meme… “adopt a My Space orphan.” That is, I found it humorous until, upon reflection, I saw that I had as few MySpace friends as the unfortunates who were put up for adoption. Then my request for friendship somehow became more meaningful and I found myself checking back every ten or fifteen minutes to see if I had been accepted yet. Alas…