Social Networks Do the Darnedest Things

I'm currently getting trounced in Scrabble on Facebook, though I'm playing the game under protest: How can they possibly say that "ZA," "KA," and "AE" are English words, but "KABOOM" is not? The stupid thing is rigged.

Anyway, I've been playing around with this social network business for a little while now, and it's kind of weird. Because I'm well past the target demographic, I've got a really strange distribution of "friends"-- a total of 67, with no more than 5 in any one network. It's an odd assortment of people I know from work, people I know from Usenet, bloggers and blog readers, and a random selection of people I went to college with.

I can easily see how this sort of thing could be addictive. I'm not hugely invested in it, but it's definitely a great way to fritter away time playing silly trivia games (how many goddamn Disney movies are in that stupid quiz?), looking at weird applications, and getting whipped at Scrabble. And, now, blogging about it as a work avoidance strategy...

(It is moderately useful to me to be able to look at the local "Network," and see what students think is important on campus. This is often interesting, and occasionally appalling.)

(I only have a handful of local "friends" because I'm not about to start sending "friend" requests to students, as that strikes me as being on the wrong side of the WWDCD line. I wouldn't turn them down (I've got a couple of "friends" who are blog readers I've never met), but I try not to be that sort of creepy faculty guy.)