On language and the Facebook friend

The English language once had a problem. Admittedly, the English language isn’t perfect. No natural language is. However, it’s simply ridiculous that spelling out the phrase “potato, potato” causes it to no longer have its intended meaning.
Actually, wait. The English language still has that problem. Let me try that again.
The English language once had a problem. Admittedly, it isn’t perfect. No natural language is. But one of the issues English (and indeed most any language) faces is the issue of gaps in meaning between words. Consider, for example, “yellow” and “green.” Both are colors, and both reside in the same general region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Once you are comfortable with the concepts of “yellow” and “green,” it is not much of a leap to consider the concept that lies halfway between them.
However, this color does not have a unique word for it; technically, such words exist, but most are more foods than colors (“chartreuse,” “pear,” “olive,” etc.) Since these words are not commonly used as colors, most people would probably just call such a color “yellow-green,” or “greenish-yellow” or something of that ilk. As far as speaking comprehensible English is concerned, this is a fine solution.
But like everything else, it’s not that simple. In the case of colors, having a precise set of words for every possible color concept is not all that critical because, let’s be honest, colors are not that important (sorry, art students.) Besides, even if you are a chromaphile, there are well-established, mathematically precise ways of enumerating particular colors, so even if it’s not technically part of the English language, we still have a system.
But lots of concepts don’t have nice, neat mathematical equivalents: Emotions, desires and social relationships generally can’t be defined with formulas, and so we need words. This is the reason language exists, after all: to communicate concepts we can’t communicate otherwise.
Let us consider another example: When you first meet someone, they become an “acquaintance.” “Acquaintance” is a nice word because it’s very precise, and its definition is more or less obvious. Basically every person that you have ever met can be described as an acquaintance, right?
Sure, that’s technically accurate, but calling someone an acquaintance strongly connotes that they are no more than an acquaintance. Social correctness demands that we refer to an acquaintance by the strongest possible word. You don’t call your wife your “girlfriend,” you don’t call your girlfriend your “friend” and you don’t call your friend your “acquaintance.” As with most social constructs, this inevitably leads to confusion and irritation because two people might have very disparate definitions of these relationships. Call someone an “acquaintance” who thinks of you as a “friend” and it is pretty much guaranteed that that someone is going to feel hurt. Of course, if you’re a misanthrope, this doesn’t matter all that much, but this is a meaningful problem for most people.
Enter the Internet. As usual, the Internet brings the general betterment of our society and improves the lives of all parties involved. Since we’re talking about social relationships, we must of course turn to that most socially productive of Internets, Facebook. With the rising usage of Facebook, of course, comes the wonderful concept of the Facebook friend.
The Facebook friend is not a particularly new concept, but it is an increasingly pervasive one. New data from the marketing research firm comScore shows that Facebook is getting ever more face time from its users. According to their data, in December 2009, the average Facebook user visited the site 27.4 times per month, 64 percent more often than in December 2008. Also, according to Facebook’s officially published statistics, the average active user uses the site for nearly an hour every day. Given that college students are notorious Facebook users, it’s fair to say that the numbers for the average student are even higher than these. In any case, we are more exposed to our Facebook friends than ever.
But what exactly is a Facebook friend? If you’ve been paying attention and didn’t just skip ahead to this paragraph, you’ve probably already guessed. A Facebook friend is one of several hundred people whom (you guessed it) you have befriended on Facebook, whether of Facebook’s suggestion or of your ever less-important own volition.
The concept of the Facebook friend allows us to linguistically and socially bridge the gap between the concepts of the acquaintance and the friend. Additionally, the Facebook friend has the very useful property of being rigidly defined, unlike most social concepts. Not sure if you consider someone your friend but want to avoid hurting their feelings? As long as that person is your Facebook friend, you possess a well-defined common ground on which you can claim a basis for your relationship. Logically, the form of the Facebook friend can extend to such concepts as the Facebook “In a relationship,” the Facebook “Married” and so on and so forth. The stringently-defined relationships that Facebook enforces are much more socially useful than the more old-fashioned concepts, since these relationships are expressly labeled, conveniently unambiguous and often publically available.
Of course, some people might argue that the concept of the Facebook friend cheapens the concept of actual friendship, but it’s a small price to pay for clarity in language, no?

Sam Blake welcomes comments at sblake@mndaily.com.