Sure, You Read Me, But Who'll Friend Me?

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 4, 2007

It was like wandering into a raucous freshman dorm three decades after I last wore bell-bottoms.

In just three years, Facebook.com has exploded in popularity as a gated community for the young. But after the social networking site late last year lifted its ban on anyone older than a recent college graduate, I decided to have a look around.

I'm still puzzled by this mysterious process in which some people invite you to become friends (meaning you can see their home pages, photos and compilation of friends) while others blow you off. Some 20-somethings "friended" me out of the blue but never sent me any messages or replied to mine. It almost seems like the point is to collect a long list of names rather than establish relationships outside your immediate circle.

Still, there's an addictive quality to Facebook as you keep checking back to see if you have any new-friend requests or messages -- and feel like a loser if you're isolated. What's more, there's the voyeuristic aspect of getting a peek into people's lives and how they choose to present themselves.

I got (okay, stole) the idea from Slate columnist Emily Yoffe, who describes her social-networking skills as being on par with Ted Kaczynski's. She joined up, wrote a piece and by now has 1,057 friends -- so many that Facebook briefly shut down her communications for exceeding some kind of limit.

So I posted a rudimentary profile and friended Emily, as well as my college-age daughter (who essentially indicated she would rather torch her computer than give me access to her page). I found a friend from The Post (who rather impressively had John Updike as a friend, although he couldn't vouch for the authenticity). And then I waited. And waited.

A young woman in Toronto sent me a friend request, and soon I knew far more about Kelly than I wanted to, thanks to a recent Facebook innovation known as a newsfeed. Every time one of your friends adds a new friend, drops a boyfriend or changes a profile picture, a notification pops up on your home page.

I learned that Kelly had joined the group "Green Acres Day Camp ex-staff in the 1980's and '90s." That she had joined "Costco Lovers" and "Oshawa Red Roof Pizza Hut" and "Old Navy, Store #5463" and "caroline and rachel's school of food fighting and lunch throwing." And such groups as "I do nothing all day . . . because I DON'T HAVE A JOB."

I checked out these groups and they seemed to consist of Kelly and five or six of her friends, with only a handful of posts. Maybe this is the 21st-century equivalent of hanging out.

A more serious young woman named Heather seemed to be quite the committed liberal, who kept attending films like "An Inconvenient Truth" (though I also learned that she attended a "Drink Specials at Nachos! Party"). I kept getting copied on invitations she sent to her peeps ("Join the Columbia University Working Families Party and the Columbia Coalition Against the War in a night of debate about ways to end the war in Iraq"). I was even kept apprised of her mood swings: Heather is "feeling that the world is an extremely crazy place." Take a number.

Meanwhile, I was determined to get into double digits. I got in touch with an ex-colleague, New York Times reporter John Schwartz, who posts wry comments on his recent doings and has 142 friends. But a bit of investigation found that he had an unfair advantage: His son had started a group called "Friend My Father."

One young man who supports Chris Dodd for president and has started a Facebook group for the Connecticut senator boasted that he had gotten through to C-SPAN with "my typically excited pro-CHRIS DODD TIRADE."

Romantic updates popped up. Gregory went from being "in a relationship" to "it's complicated." Soon afterward, I was informed that he was now "in an open relationship." Apparently it was no longer that complicated.

I considered joining some media groups as a way of networking. "Vote Meredith Vieira Off the 'Today Show' Island" had a grand total of one member. (Talk about being on an island!) There were 56 Katie Couric groups, ranging from "Bring Back Bob Schieffer" to "Katie Couric, You Sexy Goddess, Stop Wearing Frumpy Duds!" Diane Sawyer, the co-host of "Good Morning America," has 13 groups, including "Diane Sawyer is HOT." I started to detect a theme.

There didn't seem to be as much interest in male anchors. Brian Williams had a fan club with three members; "Bring Back Brokaw" had 30. As for newspapers, "I Hate the New York Times and Their Liberal Propaganda" drew 64 members.

And yet there are more than 500 groups devoted to beer.

Eventually I had a wee bit of interaction. I received friend invitations from a blogger and two (middle-aged) colleagues, and we briefly exchanged messages. But then it was back to strangers who just wanted me on their swollen lists.

Facebook began at Harvard before spreading to the Ivy League, all colleges and then high schools. Now that anyone can join, a group of members over 25 started a group called "Unlike 99.99% of the Facebook population, I was born in the 70s." And the point? "Uh, if you need a description, you probably don't belong here. Why don't you go IM somebody or check out a Britney concert."

The throwing open of the cyber-gates -- there are now 22 million members -- is not universally popular among the college crowd.

"It's going to become just as bad as MySpace," one person wrote. "You'll have stalkers, and not just the harmless stalkers like myself who look up that hot girl in their Psych class. And recently some girl from Arkansas or something with no college network (surprise, surprise) started a group for Holocaust denial. This is what happens when you let the rabble in."

Well, it's too late now. I'm up to 29 friends.

Too Good to Check

The quote was so explosive that Susan Estrich couldn't resist using it in her syndicated column.

The topic: "Is there anything Mitt Romney won't say or do to try to win the Republican nomination?"

Picking up on a zinger that John McCain had delivered to his presidential rival, Estrich, who managed Michael Dukakis's 1988 presidential campaign, found a retort online from the Romney camp. She wrote:

"Besides, who is McCain to talk? 'Why don't you go cry about torture some more, old man,' Romney's spokesman is quoted as saying in response. 'When we're in charge, we're going to nonlethally stress the hell out of you in Gitmo #15.'

" 'Old man'?" she wrote. "Ouch. Accusing a man who spent years in a North Vietnam prison of 'cry[ing] about torture' and threatening to 'stress the hell' out of him?"

When the column was sent out, an editor at Michigan's Lansing State Journal, Derek Melot, thought the quote was so outrageous that he wondered why he hadn't heard it before. After an online search, he found that it had come from the satirical Web site Wonkette -- and was completely invented. Creators Syndicate, which handles Estrich's column, quickly sent out a "mandatory correction," and the gaffe apparently never got into print.

Estrich, who teaches law at the University of Southern California, says she thought of attributing the quote to Wonkette but figured many readers would be unfamiliar with the site. She says she used the formulation "is quoted as saying" because "I worry about this all the time when I rely on secondary sources. . . .

"I guess I shouldn't consider Wonkette to be 'reporting,' but that's the problem in our brave new world. Where I come from, there's a problem with making up quotes and attributing them to campaign spokesmen, but I guess that's very old-fashioned of me."

Double-checking material from humor sites is also an old-fashioned virtue.

Katie's New Crusade

Katie Couric is taking a stand.

On Friday, when she anchored the "CBS Evening News" from Washington, Couric did a story on D.C. officials pushing for a voting member of Congress. But she went a step further--an unusual step for a network anchor--in endorsing their cause.

In a "Katie's Notebook" video posted on CBS's Web site and made available to its television and radio stations, Couric lamented that "these D.C. residents, who can send their sons and daughters off to war, still do not have a vote." After summarizing each side's case, Couric concluded: "Every American deserves to have someone on their side voting in Congress."

Even those who agree with her might question whether Couric, who was unavailable for comment, should be taking sides on a political issue. But she is no stranger to the controversy, having grown up in Arlington.