had to delete a friend today; it just wasn’t working out. Normally I would just quietly remove someone and not say anything, let alone blog about it. But this guy deserves to have the decision explained, and I think the lesson is valuable enough.
I’m not prone to adding people that I don’t actually know, but we sort of knew each other through a friend so it was an exception. As a rule I believe the friend’s list is a representation of the self, and that a list full of robots and viruses reflects poorly on one’s personal standards.
Jenna and I didn’t meet Jeremy Henry at the Of Montreal/Tilly and the Wall concert last year. We met Dax. Dax is a really cool indie kid from North Texas/South Oklahoma. Before we left that night, we exchanged myspace addresses with our new friend. Soon after we had a friend request.
A few days later I got a message from Jeremy Henry, saying he knew Dax and was supposed to go to the concert with him. He heard we were cool and wanted to be myspace friends.
I did the obligatory background check (you know, read his profile) and was noticed that he messaged me from his music page but didn’t think anything of it. After the friend request, I got frequent bulletins from Jeremy updating his “fans” about his up-in-coming career as a musician. I didn’t really feel like a fan, though, because of the crazy “we never actually met” story.
Well, today his bulletin, err, “press release” explains how he scored an album debut based on his guerrilla myspace marketing. At first I thought “well good for him,” which is what I generally feel after reading his bulletins. But now, all of a sudden, I feel like our non-friendship is actually adding to his credibility.
Don’t get me wrong, I neither love nor hate his music–it’s not about that.
And it’s not really about the viral or FOF (friend of friend) marketing. We are each served advertisements on myspace that are lifestyle-specific. It’s a new fact of life–it’s not going away. I get it.
But don’t use the fact that you have a bunch of friends on your myspace music page to somehow justify your new record, especially since many of those people just blindly added you like I did.
