I love having a reputation sometimes.

In a documentary I once watched (it may have been a Stephen Fry one, but I can't remember its title, which makes me think it might've just been something else entirely) that mentioned at any one time, the average individual has 300 contacts with whom they regularly socialise or have a reciprical rapport. I can't remember if that includes random people you regularly see (say a newsagent etc), but for the purposes of Facebook, I just treated it as people for whom I had a good relationship. This was the philosophy I used to guide my Facebook friend-addage. Once I hit that 300 mark (with a lovely Teresa), I pretty much shifted gears and started adding people I wanted to establish contacts with, and/or wished to stalk.

This ideological change must've occured October'ish last year, because that's when my 7000th day was, and I recall talking to Teresa in Union Court about my joke party (yea sikkunt!) as well as mentioning she was my 300th friend. Anyway, now I'm close to 480.

Perhaps one of the most interesting observations I've made during this time is not watching how different people interact in my feed in real time, but watching how people interact with me. I'm pretty hefty in my stream of status updates, and I figure many people will prolly mute me. By the same token, I often have a lot of people that I've had very *very* little contact with will very readily comment a status update with a good answer to my question, or a laugh, or some other congruent reaction. People with whom I have had literally *no* contact, will Like things I do, but rarely do they ever interact.

Two overt interactions I've had has dealth with Facebook chat. A great tool for connection with people whose MSNs I don't have/need/want-to-share-mine as well as monitoring activity. It's why I have Facebook open whenever I am home, like my MSN being on 24/7 I like to keep myself open to any opportunities that come knocking. Thus far, only two people of my growing list of never-talked-tos have talked to me.

A few things I've observed that these people have somehow come to understand about me:

1. They always use proper spelling and grammar, taking care to be polite and will laugh at my jokes, always basing their attitudes to me based on how I treat them.
2. It's always for academic help - they know I've since left Grammar and that I am smart enough to be worth asking for help.
3. And that I will offer help.

Admittedly, two interactions isn't really enough to make such sweeping generalisations, but I will evaluate all future interactions along these three criterion.

But it is something, huh? How do these people come to know that? Do they gather that from my appearances in their news feed? It's possible, I'm pretty candid and open, especially in the commenting of those items. But these people respectively have a *lot* of friends (like 600, 700+, which is why I was willing to add them, 'cause they ain't prudish with friend requests).

Or perhaps it's just a reputation I've had that far outstrips me. Either I'm just a person the respective people that know me mention occasionally and thus people gain a peripheral knowledge of me or they've gone out of their way to find out who the hell I am and got just files upon files of my exploits.

The third option is that these people have needed help, and whorishly opened themselves up and asked for help from everyone. But I'm choosing not to acknowledge this because it doesn't stroke my ego. The final alternative is that they needed help, and went about looking at profiles of their friends finding out anything they can and thus stumbling upon my academically oriented profile. This is less likely - who has the time to do that?

So really it's down to two main options. Either it's the reputation I've built through my portrayal of me through the medium of Facebook, or it's the reputation I built two years ago still doing wonders. It's most likely a complex interaction between the two. It can be the teasing snippets I provide on Facebook filtering into the mainstream of IRL and people running around going "did you hear this about Shanan...?" which I know has happened in the past ;)

Prolly the thing that makes me feel ebst about myself is that those reputations do include the thought that I am willing to help, and for those two individuals I did my best to try to help, but since I didn't do the subjects of one of them I can't provide much help.

(I've just realised a huge flaw in my logic: I'm totally in the dark about any time a person has needed help and specifically *not* come to me. I can't measure how often that occurs and my above analysis depends upon that number of people not coming to me ... to be 0 D: D: D:)