He Has 423 Facebook Friends...But He's Not Real

imacrazynutmeg conducted an evil and excellent experiment. —Sparkitors

John is your average seventeen-year-old boy. According to Facebook, he lives in Nothingboro, attends a Regional High School, listens to Atreyu, watches SNL, enjoys snowboarding and chilling with his “bros.”

He is completely normal except for one small detail.

John is not a real person.

Now some background: I have had a Facebook for around three years and have 530 “friends,” which I think is a lot. Many of people have over 800 “friends,” but how many of them do they actually know?

Because I was wondering whether people just accept requests from anyone with a Facebook pulse, I created the John Facebook page. I added him to the Algonquin network, and friended people until Facebook didn’t let me. Then I waited.

During my very brief wait for someone to accept a friend request (under 2 minutes), I thought about the definition of a friend. Being one in a thousand of someone’s friends doesn’t really make me feel all that special.

In elementary school, friends were people who knew my birthday and would be invited to my party. Now I had 500 "friends," half of whom wished me a happy birthday online. But how many of these people would have actually remembered my birthday when they saw me? Of course, I am just as guilty as anyone of posting on a friend’s wall rather than saying something in person.

John is not real, he is not real friends with anyone, and he will never wish you a happy birthday in person, but people quickly started accepting his friend requests.

Perhaps people think it’s a sign of popularity to know John and a thousand other people, not to mention being “friends” with that many people and knowing their personal information. Nowadays, teenagers “friend” people from their classes for assignments, or members of their sports teams, or kids from camp or vacations. Or maybe you friend that cute guy in your math class that could be a possible prom date.

As we all know, Facebook allows you to be in the loop and serves as a way to ask for last-minute help from friends at 11pm the night before a test. So it makes sense to be friends with every student at Algonquin, right?

Wrong, because these people might not even be real.

423 people thought John was real, no questions asked.

26 people wrote on his wall for his birthday.

In 45 minutes of having a Facebook, John had 50 friends. In less than two days, he had over 100 friends (and even got a few friend requests). In three days, he nearly had 300 friends and counting. None of these people have ever met him.

So why do people accept friend requests from people that they have never even met? John could be anyone; he could be a college admissions counselor, a stalker, an ex-girlfriend, a principal, or even your helicopter mother. Making a profile is as easy as creating a fake name, putting in a picture, giving an email, and adding people to a network.

Next time a friend request pops up, think before you click.

Do you accept requests from people you've never met? Are you afraid of creepers online?