my last blog

I remember this Seinfield episode (or was it some other sit-com) where friendship was measured on the scale of what your number was on the speed dial of someone's phone. The world, it seems, has always delighed in social pissing contests (i know more people than you do ) and one of the latest entrants into the fray is orkut. I am an self admitted orkut addict. I check my scrap book around 10 times a day, which considering that I check email only 10 times an hour, is an enormous number. I don't always reply to scraps but desperately crave a reply for each scrap that I send out (somehow the irony of that has managed to escape me until this minute ). I started out orkutting long ago and my friends list grew sporadically to around 230 people and then stagnated right there. Nowadays I desperately hunt down old schoolmates (their family ???!!!) and others in the hope of increasing that number by some inconsequential amount. One wonders what would happen if I were to put that effort into research (of the academic variety).
Then there came this concept of fans and karma. I now measure other people based on the number of fans they have. The little "hearts, ice cubes and smileys" as Orkut deigns to call them have become yardsticks to qualify people you have hardly met.
Ofcourse, all this is accompanied by the standard travails of any such mess... the desperate "cool-dudes" knocking on unknown girls friends lists because they look cute in their display pics.... communities for things as specific as " a**l s*x in lucknow, india"... one wonders how they got THEIR kicks before orkut kicked in...
but the point here is... i am still reminded of my old middle school days when all that mattered was how many girls you knew in class... and that gave you the bragging rights at a lot of lunch hours... not much has changed now has it.. ?