Ah those days. The heyday of Friendster when those tacky "Thanks for the add" banners littered your testimonial columns. You didn't know whether you should delete them and hurt some ditzy girl's feeling, or be nice and let them bling, in hopes that if you stared at them long enough you could at least save on your recreational hallucinogens spending.

And as the tackiness became unbearable, it came the time to say goodbye to Friendster and say hello to the more hip and modish Myspace. If you were a musician, you could even upload your songs and have people from all over the world listen to them. They'd drop comments telling you how cool your sounds are, how they love your style. But after a while, every comment started to sound like a template that ends with "check out our music and give us your comments too". You finally figure out that the only reason they complimented you was to get you to compliment them.

And then suddenly, everybody you know and their next-door neighbor seemed to have started a band and made a myspace account and it got even worse. The good ol' text comments were replaced by web banners. No more would you get feedback on your last performance or questions about your lyrics. All you got were html images of some event promotions or self-proclaimed indie bands with their yes-i-know-photoshop design and text that read "Please check out our new song".

You realized that you shouldn't be a bitch about it, and everybody's just trying to get heard. But then some bands are just way too persistent. You gave them one positive comment and they start hogging you for more. Every time they came up with a new song, which is about twice a week for most college dropouts, they would ask you for another opinion.

And then just as you started to feel cornered, came the new up-to-the-minute social network that seemed to be all the rage: Facebook. It was the first time you saw people using their real names instead of XanaXprincesS or <*CuTeL1sA*>. You reconnected with old friends, found your High School crush, it was a blast. But as you predicted, it didn't take long before everybody discovered the joy of Facebook and history began to repeat itself. I guess you know by now that by saying "you", I was actually referring to myself, and my own experience with social networking websites. My being a person who values my privacy, doesn't mean that I didn't get lured into the mild exhibitionism of Internet social networking.

It's quite interesting that in a fast paced city like our Jakarta, everybody seem to have time to check their Facebook account daily, for hours at a time in some cases. Some offices have even blocked Facebook because it's becoming a threat to their employee's productivity. Yet one of my friends who works for a multinational company admitted that she and her colleagues were so lost without it that they went as far as to bribe the IT tech to unblock Facebook on their PCs.

It's been over a year since I signed up for a Facebook account, and today I no longer find it fun. I haven't discovered and reconnected with long lost friends in months, but that's probably because I don't have many friends to begin with. At first I was picky about confirming friend requests. If I didn't know them, I ignored them. The truth is, I don't mind meeting total strangers on line. That is if our socialization has a purpose. If we have something in common, if we like each other's work, if we at least did some form of communications. But most of them just add you for no reason, and there are so many of these folks that it's no longer screenable. This morning alone, I received 65 friend requests and I'm not even a celebrity.

They comment on everything you write, every photo you upload, as if you're old friends. One guy I've never met in my life once commented on a photo of mine saying "nice pic, but that dress makes you look big". I deleted him right away.

It's starting to feel like you're throwing a party, but there's more party crashers compared to the people you actually invited. And those party crashers are stomping all over your begonias and making out in your bedroom. Not to mention that the people trying to sell you stuff or make you rich ala multi level marketing. I must admit that I am not a hundred percent guilt free when it comes to this. Facebook has been a pretty effective tool to promote my new album, but since I am not a huge fan of the hard sell, I try to keep my promotions as subtle and personal as I can. But most people couldn't care less about subtlety.

Now every time I log in to my Facebook, I no longer find a "How have you been?" on my wall from an old colleague, or a photo of my plastered drunk face from a party a few years ago. Now they tag me photos of everything from wholesale clothing to breast enlargement creams. My inbox is cluttered with offers of getting rich by working from home.

For the past few months I have found a new playground in twitter. But it is quickly turning into a huge chat room as well.

Having nagged in over 700 words about the ugliness of Internet social networking, you would think I've had enough of them already. But if you dare me to close my Facebook account, I would most likely chicken out. I'm too much of a wuss to do that.

- Kartika Jahja

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