The Social Experiment

It started out as a prank. We just wanted to prove a point--- that one of our friends just keep on adding friends in Facebook, even people he doesn't know personally, for whatever reason... i dunno... maybe to bloat his friends list, to get to know a lot of people, or maybe to create a false impression of popularity. Or maybe he's just too nice that he can't possibly reject a friend request from another person online. We never meant to do any harm. We just did it for fun.

So that the account wouldn't look suspicious, I had to add random people. I figured that at least 10 people would add strangers to their accounts. That would be enough for the account that we have created to look legitimate. The exact number? I figured that I had to add more than a hundred. The more people I send requests to, the more chances to gain "friends". I sent 120 invites to be exact. 60 men, and 60 women. After a few days, as more and more people accepted our requests, it turned out to be an amusing social experiment. Sure, we only had a small sample size, so the results may not be similar when done on a larger scale, but still--- our findings do provide a glimpse onto the human psyche. So what were the results?

Surprisingly, more than half accepted our friend request. What could that mean? It could mean that a lot of people like having lots of people in their friends lists. Maybe they just love meeting different people. Maybe they love the false sense of popularity that they get from a bloated friends list. or maybe there's just a lot of lonely people in the world.

More men accepted our friend requests. I guess women tend to be more suspicious when it comes to strangers adding them. That makes sense. After all, women are more prone to be the targets of sexual predators than men.

Personally, i was surprised when i added some people i knew personally, and they accepted our friend requests. Let's just say that i never would have though that these friends of mine would accept a friend request from a total stranger. LOL.

But what surprised me the most was the fact that none of these people were using the extensive privacy settings that were available on Facebook. It's one thing to accept a friend request, but to reveal a lot of your personal information to a complete stranger? It's good for them that i do not mean any harm. But what if my goal was to commit online fraud? or what if I was a sexual predator looking for possible victims? There sure are a lot of gullible people out there, and I just can't fathom how people can trust complete strangers with their personal information. Christ, i have access to all their pictures. I can see their email addresses, complete mailing addresses, and telephone numbers. Crimes committed online and sexual predators using social networking sites are all over the news, I was really surprised at how people can be so trusting.

On a lighter note... I guess if your goal is to make new friends, pick a cool looking profile picture. Even something as simple as a silhouette of a person doing an extreme sport like skydiving, snow boarding, or surfing can make you go far--- that can make your profile look cool and attractive, and more people are bound to accept. LOL.

Now what about our original goal? In that regard, our social experiment was a failure. Our friend just kept ignoring our friend request. Either he suspects something fishy, or he has already changed his old ways.

If that's the case, well then... that's good for him. :)