Screwing with Friendster
Aug. 19, 2003 13 Comments Posted under: General
Perhaps, in response to Jonathan Abrams’ threats to delete “fakesters” last week:
Pretendster: a service that generates fake profiles.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2003 at 6:02 pm and is filed under General. You can leave a comment and follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Good lord. Pretendster.
It’s like a Garfield suction cup toy… FOR THE CAR WINDOW OF YOUR SOUL.
This makes me very sad.
More like a “Hipster On Board” sign than a Garfield toy, I’d think.
Either way, we have achieved suckage.
as a person who is on friendster, but in a minimal disinterested way, i find pretendster to be unblievably fun and amazing. i think i’m only going to ever log on as my pretendster.
Oh come on. Where’s your sense of humor? Friendster was just one big popularity contest anyway.
pretendster is just like spam and junkmail.
How do you figure? I think it depends on how people use it. If you’re a prankster, you use it to register fake people and laugh as real guys try and pick up the fake girls. But you could also use pretendster to create an alter ego, which raises all sorts of interesting questions about virtual identity. Enjoy it while you can.
i now have a circle of half a dozen of pretendsters, who are all friendsters with each other, a fast-growing pretend social network. it is much more fun than my “real” profile, and (sadly?) my pretendsters have all gotten multiple e-mails from real friendsters hitting on them, while my “real” profile hasn’t met a single person in 2 months.
i’m with you fakester…
Okay, so I’m a humorless boob.
But nonetheless, I’ll say the following:
- While Friendster may have been in some ways a popularity contest… it had / has the potential to actually be an enjoyable and – gasp – USEFUL way for meeting new people, especially when moving to a new city.
- Folks like those behind Pretendster really need to get a life. They’re basically fucking with a system in ways that aren’t THAT funny… and also fucking with lots of people… many of whom are legitimately trying to make new friends.
Maybe I’m just pollyanna’ish, but I really liked the idea of being able to check out connections amongst my (real) friends… not see which of my dumb friends have linked to a Giant Squid, giving me 50,000 completely bogus and basically spam-quality contacts.
Frankly, it seems a shame to me that lamerz with no lives have the time and inclination to ruin what could be a really cool service.
Why does it matter if you meet someone through a Giant Squid versus a person 3 people removed from you? At least you can say “Oh, I found you via the Squid,” (which is mildly amusing as far as openers go) vs. “Oh, I’m a friend of George’s friend Gary’s friend Mary (which is meaningless).
Is it a geography issue? Because chances are George is living in Des Moines, Gary in Saitama, and Mary’s in NYC. And none of them can help show you around Columbus. (By the by, all Pretendsters are in the 94133 zip.)
Or are you concerned that the fake people generated by Pretendster are too believable and are causing confusion? Pretendster was/is a gesture (Artist Statement forthcoming). We wanted to create pretty-damn believeable people to make a point about how reducing everyone to a few bullet points says nothing about their real character (not to mention how the concept of testimonials is just completely demented). But if you actually take the time to read a complete profile, you can find inconsistencies: e.g., a Pretendster’s age doesn’t seem to jive with the fact that she has a 15 year-old son.
The fact that the majority of messages sent to Pretendsters are from guys scamming on girls (I think I’m making a fair assumption here based on a sample of messages sent to Pretendsters, then forwarded to me or blogged) is incidental. We were naive as to how much of a meat-market Friendster really is. In my mind that kind of behavior is far more intrusive than fake people. It doesn’t matter if you are in a relationship and are ‘Just here to help!’ George and Gary are both slimy and spam anything with breasts.
The problem is not ‘lamerz’ like us trying to look clever, it’s the fact that in order to attract attention on Friendster, you, the registrant, have to look clever. You have to be trendy without appearing trendy and showcase your mastery of postmodern irony. Everything has to be calculated because you are being judged by the aforementioned bullet points. The ultimate purpose of the service is the accumulation of friends. But no losers, please. Only other kids with cool profiles and 500 friends of their own.
There is a definite appeal to logging in to Friendster and seeing the different connections you have to people. But Pretendster doesn’t muck that up for you, so I’m not sure what your concern is.
–
For the record:
Pretendster was not a reaction to the SF Weekly article. It was pure coincidence that it was released the day after the article was published (we’d been working on it for a little under a week).
We didn’t know who Mr. Abrams was prior to reading the article. An aside: I think there’s something to be said for the fact that he created Friendster to pick up chicks and still isn’t having any luck with the ladies.
We didn’t know about the Fakester war.
We didn’t register Giant Squid or Jesus or Can of WD-40.
We are all lovely, well-rounded people with legitimate Friendster accounts. If you want proof, just read our testimonials.
thank you pretendster creators. it’s really very funny. as a non-humorless boob i thoroughly enjoy it.
?!
Can Of WD-40 said it loved me.
Internet 1, dong resin, 0.