How Well Do You Know...

So i am a facebook addict-most days, anyway. I am blown away by Web 2.0 and how it has changed the way we do business in many ways (have you noticed how many of your favorite brands, bakeries, sportsmen and celebrities are on Facebook and Twitter now? It's amazing!) With social networking sites becoming veritable universes for people to spend a good amount of their time (whether via a mobile or a PC) it is obvious that Facebook and other social networking sites create opportunities to entertain their growing fan base.
One particular avenue of entertainment is that whole slew of inane quizzes that you can take that 'help' answer questions such as " What Cocktail are you" (duh!), "What City Are you meant to live in?" (slightly useful) etc.
So on a particularly random evening when i was killing time on facebook, i stumbled upon a reverse-quiz: this quiz that YOU create for your friends to discover how well they really know you. So sure- i took a stab at it-put together a pretty lame quiz (with the help of suggested questions) that provide some insight into who i am (really?).

Turns out-people did really well on my quiz, even those who did not know me as well as say my best friends(i repeat the word ' lame' here). Some of them created their own quiz and subsequently, some of us (yes, including me) did not score too favorably on their friends' quizzes. I even know of a wife who scored a measly 30% on her husband's quiz. Ha!! Do i need to repeat a certain word again?

So i got thinking (and not merely to defend my bad scores)-can we really tell who is a good friend based on whether they know our favorite karaoke song, or what our nicknames were as kids? Does it matter if my best friend knows what my favorite colors are, or whether i prefer perfumes to shoes as gifts? (ok i agree- the last one might be a useful fact to know!)

Are these bits of trivia critical, especially in a day and age when our best buddies are globally dispersed across multiple cities, time zones and careers-and our conversations are more through these social networking technologies and email than through in-person tete-a-tetes?

So as our world and lives change, who should we still value as a good friend?
Someone who you can talk to, no matter how long its been since you last met, without having to wonder what to talk about? Or should it be someone who remembers what my favorite drink in college was? What about close friends that i made after i was out of college? Do they not qualify as good friends because they did not know which city i was born in or which is my favorite dessert even if we share values and opinions and have a whole bunch of memories to laugh over?

Facebook creates these quizzes as a way to have fun, spark new conversations, trigger new threads. And yes-these things are fun, including the fake banter and tantrums and declarations of 'Fraud' that they may spark off.

But fun apart-i realise that the friends i really care about are those that bother to stay aware of what's going on in my life, who can laugh with me about some silly gossip, who are there for me when i need to vent about something, with whom i can pick up from where i left off the last time we met, people i really look forward to seeing and talking with...isnt that what friendship is really about?


Dedicated to my girls-you know who you are! :)