Fake Friends

What's stupider than Facebook? Having lots of Facebook "friends" that you don't even know. But what's even stupider than that?

Paying money for them.

Bizarre as it may sound, there's actually a growing industry for providing "fake friends" to people desperate to make themselves look well-liked on social networks. There's this company that promises 500 new Facebook friends for only $65.00. And if that's just not enough sockpuppet shills for you, you can try cheapfbfans.com, which makes the truly ludicrous offer of 10,000 "real FB fans" for a mere $449.95. I'm not kidding.

People are buying Twitter followers, too. The going price for fake Twitter friends seems to be a lot cheaper than Facebook - probably because it's a lot easier to set up a bot to generate endless bogus Twitter accounts. Twitter1k.com's hilariously misspelling-laden website promises 5000 Twitter followers for just $79.97. I just don't get it.

Then there's buymyspacepages.com, which is even more baffling to me. Says here: "We have MySpace pages for sale with 1000's of friends ready to go! Whether for your personal or professional use, we can take care of you! Click the 4 Sale link to the left and check out the current pages available. If you have any questions don't hesitate to contact us! If you want a page made with specific demographics, check out the Business Plans page."

But... but... if none of it is real, what is the point? Seriously. This is the "new media" of the internet - a bunch of monkeys pushing buttons and hurling fake data at each other, shuffling it around from one place to another for no reason.

I don't even really know what "Tumblr" is, but evidently there are idiots eager to buy Tumblr followers as well.

I think I'll rent myself out as a surrogate friend for the real world, not the imaginary and increasingly useless online one. For a fee, I will be your friend, hang out, drink up your beer, borrow your Johnny Rivers albums and not bring them back, lie for you when your girlfriend thinks you're at the bowling alley, and get your back when you end up in a fistfight with some psycho holding an "I Need Tickets" sign. I'm available at low, low, discount rates; inquire.

- - JSH