A celebrity run-in in Bellevue

A couple of weeks ago, I had a rare case of starstruck-itis.

My buddy Aaron’s wife, Lacey, had used Facebook to invite a bunch of friends to a trampoline gym in Bellevue. I mean no offense by this, but I wasn’t so sure I wanted to go at first. I figured we would be the oldest people there without kids, and I was right.

But I’ve known Aaron since we were in elementary school, and I’ve considered him a friend since we worked together at a retirement home in high school.

In the end, I was glad I went. The trampolines turned out to be a lot more fun than I’d expected, and we ran into one of the most famous people in the world as we were leaving. As we stood at our locker, putting our shoes on and dabbing the sweat from our foreheads, I noticed a man with a bad haircut walk past our group. He wore glasses and a crisp, white polo, and had his hands in the pockets of his khakis. He casually strolled by with his wife, Melinda. It was Bill Gates.

It’s not often that I encounter someone who makes me feel starstruck. I’ve been mere feet from John McCain and Tom Morello. I’ve interviewed NFL players and professional supercross riders (OK, one of each). I didn’t think much of those situations, mostly because they were planned events and there are lots of politicians, pro athletes and musicians in the world (though none quite like Tom Morello, I must admit. That was pretty cool.) But this was Bill Gates. One of the wealthiest people in the world and the man who is basically responsible for the way the world has done business and evolved communication-wise over the past 30 years. He’s kind of a big deal.

I stood with my mouth agape and tapped my buddy Jon on the arm. “Dude. It’s Bill Gates!” I whispered excitedly. The rest of our group turned around to look. I pointed out the white polo and glasses. Mr. Gates was apparently renting out the entire gym for some type of party for his kids and their friends. He went to sit down and I approached to get a better look. I asked one of the staff members if he would try to get an autograph. He just smiled a flabbergasted smile and shrugged. “Ha. I dunno.” I told him I would give him $5 if he walked up to the man and said, “Hey! I’m a PC!” He just chuckled. In the end, I don’t think he ever went through with it. Maybe he was a Mac.

After our brush with celebrity, me, Aaron, Lacey, Jon, Aaron’s buddies Seth and Tom, and Tom’s girlfriend, Susan, went out for dinner and then headed back to Jon’s place in Tacoma. Jon’s wife, Sondra, had just gotten off work and welcomed us with snacks and an eager golden retriever. After we finished a board game and were getting ready to move on to another, I made my move.

“Have I told you guys about my new writing project?” I asked.

I laid out the questions and got some interesting responses. Tom had a pretty narrow definition of what a friend is.

“They’re people who like me because I’m cool,” he joked.

“Actually, a friend is someone you’re willing to sacrifice something for, be it time, something physical, or anything else,” he said. 

I liked Aaron’s response: “Friends are people who ask me questions about how I define the word friend.”

When I asked Lacey why we need friends she said we’re conditioned that way, but we also have an innate desire for companionship.

“We don’t know how to be alone. We grow up in community,” she said. “If you’re alone all the time, you go crazy. You have to fight with your own mind, and people can’t handle that.”

“You need other people to fight with,” Jon chimed in.

“That’s why we marry them,” said Aaron. 

As far as what Facebook accomplishes, Seth agreed with the rest of our group, that its primary function is to coordinate events and allow people to check in with others from time to time. And when one of those online “friendships” goes awry and it’s time to delete the person from your account, it’s best to refrain from real-life contact too. Or, as Sondra put it, “If I saw them at Target, I’d probably avoid them.” 

Side note: This may be one of my last posts related to The Project. I'm going to brainstorm some ideas and figure out a new project.

Talkin' 'bout movies and mooches

Yesterday I went to Seattle with my buddies Chris and Luke to see a movie about a street artist who tried to make a movie about the street artist Banksy and ended up having a movie made about him, directed by Banksy. I know that’s confusing, but trust me, the movie does a great job of telling the story and kept everyone in the theater quite interested the entire time.
Chris and I live in Bremerton, but Luke lives in Seattle, so after the movie Luke went on his way and Chris and I headed for the ferry.
On the ride home, I decided to talk to Chris about my concerns surrounding The Project. We sat in his car on the ferry, me finishing my McChicken sandwich, and him with his feet up on the dash. I wasn’t sure if I should put my feet up. Sometimes people have funny rules about that sort of thing.
“So here’s what we’re gonna do,” I said. “We need to find the next big, underground cultural movement and get in on the ground floor. We’re too late for this whole street art thing. We need to find something that’s gonna become really popular in about five years and get in on it now so when it blows up we can say, ‘I knew about that before. I’m cool.’”
“OK,” said Chris, “but if it’s anything with fashion, it’s probably not gonna work. I don’t know anything about fashion.”
“No, it won’t be anything to do with fashion,” I said. “Do I look like I know anything about fashion?” And I pointed to my boring t-shirt and jeans.
“It’s just … after seeing that movie, it made me think about whether I want to keep doing this project or start looking for some new ideas,” I went on. “I kind of feel like the whole Facebook and social networking thing is getting played out. I wanna find the ‘next big thing.’ I mean, I won’t be able to finish this project until next spring. And by that time, will people still even care about Facebook? Facebook has been around for a while, and it seems like everybody’s talking about it right now. I feel like I’m tardy to the party.”
“Maybe Facebook will be played out by the time you finish this,” Chris said. “Maybe it’ll hit a lull because everybody will be so used to it and not think about it so much anymore. But maybe you’ll give it new life. You’re coming at it from a different angle, talking to people about what friendship really means and how these sites like Facebook play into that. Maybe that’ll give some new perspective to those types of sites and the idea of friendship. And your experiences will be unique. Who knows? There might be someone else out there doing the same thing you’re doing, and trying to decide if they should keep going. But their project won’t be exactly the same as yours.”
I was starting to feel glad that I’d brought up the topic of The Project.
“You know what?” I said. “That’s a good attitude to have. I like that. So the first question is …”

Chris’s answers were very well thought out and succinct. As I told him, I wish I had been taking notes. But my paraphrasing once again will have to do.
“For me, Facebook is just an extension of my real-life relationships with people,” he said. “I have to have some connection to the person in real life before I become friends with them on Facebook.”
He went on to say that a friend is someone with whom you share some sort of mutually beneficial relationship. There has to be give and take, not just one or the other. And that’s what you gain from a friendship. People have things they need to receive from others, but they also feel a need to give. Each is gratifying in some way. Constantly taking makes you feel empty, while constantly giving makes you feel exhausted.
“If one person is just mooching off the other, they’re not a true friend. Each person has to gain something from the friendship.”
“But that’s friendship,” I said. I went back to Randy’s idea that ‘a friend is someone you genuinely enjoy spending time with.’
“To the mooch, the person he’s mooching off of is his friend, because he’s getting something from that person, and he enjoys spending time with that person” I said. “But the person being mooched off of doesn’t consider the mooch his friend. He doesn’t enjoy the time they spend together.”
Chris conceded that I had a point.
“That’s my favorite question,” I said after we’d hammered out the definition of a friend. “Everybody has such different answers, but they’re all so good.”
“See? That’s the cool thing about all this,” he said. “Everybody’s answers are going to be different. You’re getting a unique perspective from every person.”
The feelings of disenchantment I’d had with the Project started to fall by the wayside as we talked. They still creep up now and then, but I’ll trudge on. It made me wish I'd discussed the Project with all nine of the friends I'd been with the night before. But I'd only asked three of them their definition of the word 'friend.' Dammit.

One final comment about that night is a suggestion Chris made. He noted that Facebook is useful as a communication tool in that it helps him stay visually connected with people in his life who may be far away.
“I can learn more about my acquaintances and friends by looking at their pictures on Facebook. So it’s just another way of communicating with people. It’s another level of communication.”
He went on to say that it would be cool to have a visual representation of each visit with each friend for my Project. I didn’t have a camera at the time, so I couldn’t oblige just then. But I liked the suggestion. And I happened to have had a camera when I visited Aaron, Lacey, Sondra, Tom and Seth, the people I’ll write about next. (Oh, and we ran into Bill Gates during that visit.)

Should I stop or should I go?

There are a couple of things bothering me about this whole Project, and I need to vent about them.

As the banner at the top of the page says, someone else is doing the same thing as me, but to sell a phone. The good news is, the phone is getting mediocre reviews from the likes of PCWorld.com and I still don’t believe its makers will continue their ad campaign long enough for ‘Rosa’ to visit every single one of her social networking friends.

The bad news: the phone has more than 152,000 fans on Facebook as of today and it’s made by Microsoft. That means ‘Rosa’s’ journey is getting a lot of attention and the makers of the phone have enough money to do whatever they want with the ad campaign, including dragging it on forever and promoting the hell out of it.

I was really hoping to be the first to do a project like this. I still might be the first to actually complete it, but the fact that so many people already know about someone else doing their own version of it really bugs me. I realize my experiences will still be original, but the concept no longer is. And how can I compete with Microsoft?

Like I said before, I’ll continue for now. After all, the only publicity ‘Rosa’ has gotten has been on Facebook, Xbox and this page. It’s not like she’s in video stores or on billboards or TV ads (knock wood).

There’s one other thing. I’m reading a book right now where someone does a similar project. Actually, it’s quite a bit different from mine. But he does mention Facebook a few times, and that makes me wonder if I got into writing about social media too late. The book is by my newest favorite author, Danny Wallace. One of my friends introduced me to him last summer and I’ve been hooked ever since. I even joined a cult – er … collective – that he started, and sent him a passport-sized photo with a note attached. (I got a postcard back last week, but all of that is another story for another day.)

Wallace’s book is called “Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock On Their Doors and Ask Them to Come Out and Play.” It’s mostly a story about turning 30 and looking back on his childhood, but it has a strong aspect of reconnecting with people and ditching impersonal, modern modes of communication in favor of face-to-face interaction. Which is very similar to what I’m doing.

Now, it was Danny Wallace who inspired me to find my own stupid boy project, yes. But I didn’t even know about “Friends Like These” until seven months after I’d come up with my Project idea. I was inspired to do a “social science experiment,” as I call it, after reading his book “Yes Man,” and later “Join Me” (that’s the one about the cult – er … collective). But those books had nothing to do with Facebook or reconnecting with friends or modern communication methods, etc. They were just goofy projects that inspired me to create an original project of my own.

But now, after finding out about Danny’s new book (it was published in the UK in 2008, but didn’t come out in the States until September 2009, and I found out about it in March 2010) and ‘Rosa’s’ journey, my idea no longer seems original. It’s lost its luster, in my mind. And what scares me even more is that my Project has most likely lost its luster in the minds of anyone who would’ve been interested in reading about it.

But I may still be the first to complete such an endeavor, and my story will be unique. So that’s what I’m holding onto right now. If anyone is actually reading and has some advice, I’d sure appreciate it.

Information inundation: We need it! | Jon and Randy, Part 2

When we last left Jon, Randy and me, the three of us were at a table in Silver City with beers in hand (Randy’s required two hands) and bright ideas in our heads.
I sat there trying to pay attention to the conversation while constantly yet discreetly checking out the cute girl at the next table. I recognized her as the daughter of my mom’s friend. Pretty soon she left and after one last look, I gave my undivided attention to the Five Questions. Jon refilled my glass with Panther Lake Porter and we moved on.
When I asked Jon and Randy what we get out of Facebook “friendships” and keeping track of people online, Randy pointed out that people nowadays feel like they need to be constantly “in the know.” We feel like we’re left out if we aren’t constantly up to date with what’s going on in our friends’ lives.
Maybe we’ve been conditioned that way. We’re inundated daily with information, most of it useless to our everyday lives (that’s no new concept; read Amusing Ourselves to Death), and Facebook is just one of the latest additions to that pile of crap. (See also: Twitter, MSN, People magazine, etc.) But at the same time, like Chad said, Facebook and other social networking sites have their usefulness. Facebook is a communication tool (more on that in the next post). (Am I using parentheses too much?) And it can bring long lost relatives and friends back together.
Back to the subject at hand. Randy’s point was that we get some satisfaction out of keeping tabs on our friends and acquaintances because we feel like we need to do those things. We don’t want to be left out in any way. Life moves so fast, and we don’t want to be left behind. (I’m extrapolating a little, but I think Randy was getting at all this. And yes, I’m still using parentheses too much.)
Another interesting response came earlier in the night, when Katelyn was still at the next table, looking like she was worth every penny of what it would probably cost to keep a girl like her happy. When I asked Jon and Randy why we were friends on Facebook, they both had the same answer. Surprisingly, it wasn’t, “Because I’m friends with you in real life.” It was, “Because you created an account for me.” It was true. Both of them had been slow on the uptake when it came to social media. I, having been conditioned more successfully by modern mass media, was on Facebook long before they were and wanted to stay up-to-date with the life and times of my friends. So I created Facebook accounts for them. In the two or three years since then, they’ve gradually begun to use the site more and I’ve gradually eased back. I still check my home page almost daily, sometimes more often, but I don’t use the games and pointless applications that are there just for distraction. Like I mentioned earlier, Facebook is a pretty useful communication tool, and I use that feature to a fairly large degree. But I’ll get to that in my next post.

By the way, Randy told me his Facebook password is still the same as it was when I set up his account. It’s an homage to his peaceful little Chihuahua, Nacho. If you want to mess with him, it’s: ilovenacho. Have fun.

Speed Bump

I hit a speed bump in my project last weekend. A pretty large speed bump, to be honest.
Apparently I’m not the only one (and definitely not the most famous one) trying to visit every Facebook friend I have. A girl from Brooklyn has been hired by the makers of a Blackberry-imitator called the Kin to travel around the U.S. and visit all her Facebook, MySpace and Twitter friends. She’ll use the product to take videos with each of her friends and post them online. Supposedly she will do this with more than 800 friends.
When I first heard this, I was pissed off and depressed at the same time. I wanted to cancel my own project. I started coming up with other ideas for crazy stunts involving travel that I could write about. I may have come up with a pretty good one, actually. I had all but made up my mind to quit the Project, but then I decided there was enough reason to press on.
I announced my frustration on Facebook, and several of my friends told me they thought I should keep going with the Project. And then I thought, “This girl from Brooklyn will have to give up before she’s visited everyone on her list. They’re not going to keep an ad campaign going for 800-some visits, are they? And this imitation Blackberry probably has a pretty good chance of failing anyway.”
So that’s what I’m banking on, that the girl and the product will fail. I hope they do. I know that sounds callous and unkind, but I came up with the idea first. And I’m doing it to try and launch my career as a travel writer, not to plug some electronics.
I’ll keep going with the Project for now, and keep tabs on the Kin, and we’ll see what happens. If the Kin really takes off, I’ll call the Project quits. No one wants to read something unoriginal. But if the Kin crashes and burns, I’ll finish the Project.
I visited five more friends this weekend, so I’ll write up that discussion over the next few days.

What's the point of snooping on your friends? | Chad and Emma

“I don’t give a shit about Facebook,” Chad said. "Fuck Facebook.” He smirked. He was repeating a line from the Adam Sandler movie “Funny People” in the second half of that quote. But the first part was his honest opinion. Chad’s not big into the social networking sites like he used to be.
“I originally joined MySpace to find chicks,” he said. “That was when I was a teenager, and I would talk to girls on there. But I got on Facebook just to kind of stay in touch with people I don’t see very often, like my brother, who lives in South Dakota.”
I was sitting in Chad’s living room with him, his wife Emma, their dog Toots (pronounced like the first half of Tootsie) and our friend Jon. We had just finished watching a rather mediocre, pretentious Jon Krasinsky movie and now I was asking them the Five Questions.
Emma uses Facebook the same way her husband does. Even now, Chad and Emma are hardly ever on the site. They don’t see the need to constantly know what’s going on in the lives of their friends and acquaintances. If they need to communicate with someone, they’ll call or send a text. But there’s not much of a need for Facebook.
“I was friends with some ex-girlfriends on there, because some people added me and I didn’t want to be rude and just ignore them, so I accepted,” Chad continued. “But then, it’s like, I never talk to them on there or in real life, so I just deleted them. And Emma wasn’t too happy about me being friends with those exes, so at that point I was like, maybe I’ll just delete my account. Nothing in my life would change if I got rid of Facebook.”
“I think that’s probably true for everybody,” I responded. Although after I said it, I realized I was oversimplifying. Everyone would get along fine without social networking sites; we did for centuries. But many people use sites like Facebook and MySpace to keep in touch with even their close friends. These sites are replacing older forms of communication. My brother uses Facebook’s chat feature to contact his buddies all the time.
Some people spend hours at a time on those sites, and wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if those sites didn’t exist. And like Randy said two days earlier, people have a constant desire to be in the know. (I’ll write more about that later.) We feel like we’re left out if we aren’t always up to date with what’s going on in the lives of those around us. But not everyone feels that way. Chad and Emma certainly don’t.
“I rarely use it,” Chad said. “I mean, I’ll use Facebook to talk to some people, I guess. I used it to message Erik about something when his phone wasn’t working, because he’s on there all the time.”
Chad went on, “They have this thing now when you sign out of Facebook that says, ‘Take Facebook with you by using our mobile app,’ or something. Why would you need to know what people are up to when you’re out and about? Why do you need to know what they’re doing wherever you are?”
Chad and Emma are not alone in their views of social media, but they seem to be going against the trend. More and more people are joining Facebook and similar sites. I recently received friend requests from my uncle and a cousin, both of whom are in their 40s.
These websites started out as communication devices to connect high school and college friends. Now they’re used for relatives and acquaintances who want to say hi or just peek into the lives of those they have any sort of connection with, no matter how small. Our communications culture has developed in us a strong desire to be constantly in the know, even if what we know has no bearing whatsoever on our lives. And, as I alluded to earlier, that’s something Randy, Jon and I discussed. I’ll tell you more about that in the next post.

Two of my oldest friends help me define the word | Randy and Jon, Part 1

Last week I met up with two of my oldest friends, Jon and Randy, to talk about The Project and have some drinks.
Jon had a couple gift cards for free beer samplers at Silver City, so he and I split a platter of six, four-ounce glasses before Randy showed up. We picked one of our favorites – the Panther Lake Porter – and ordered a pitcher to share with Randy, who despite ordering an amber ale the size of a midget's leg, was quite lucid in his answers to the Five Questions.
Randy’s definition of a friend was similar to that of my editor. “A friend is someone who you genuinely enjoy spending time with," he said.
Jon had a more elaborate response. I told him I’d have to paraphrase it in my blog, so here we go: “A friend is someone who is there for you and who you can be open with. You don’t have to worry about them judging you.”
I’d agree with both of them, but I’d have to say Randy and my editor have the best definitions I’ve heard so far. Their definitions may be somewhat broad, but I think the other definitions I’ve heard are too narrow. And in this day and age, especially with things like Facebook, our friendships have become broader than they used to be. So Randy’s definition makes sense.

Something else we talked about was the idea that there’s not just one type of friend. We categorize the people we know into different levels of friendship. I like to think of it as a series of concentric circles. The innermost circle is, of course, your closest friends, who you hang out with one-on-one and feel comfortable telling your secrets to. Outside of that, you have close friends who you usually hang out with along with other people. They might not know your secrets. But you still feel pretty close to them, and spend a good amount of time with them.
Then maybe you have people who you hang out with along with others, and who don’t know you quite as well as the people in the two inner groups. They’re friends, but not close ones. Maybe you don’t make much of an effort to spend time with them. Maybe you only think of them when they invite you over. You don't think to do the inviting.
Then there’s the friends you only see when a mutual friend has a birthday or a wedding. Outside of that, you have the realm between friend and acquaintance; you know the person a little, but not enough to consider them a friend. It's a big step, going from acquaintance to friend, after all, isn't it?
Outside that, you have acquaintances, and then strangers. But I think Danny Wallace said something to the effect of, “Strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet.” He might have been quoting someone else, but I think it’s an admirable sentiment nonetheless. You may get knifed if you're too friendly with certain strangers, but you'll learn from the experience.
Randy, Jon and I talked some more about the Five Questions that night. I’ll post some of the highlights next time.