it seems like what we really need is enemyster.com. obviously people's friends are going to write good things about them, and the absence of positive testimonials may just be due to the fact that the people's friends aren't the type who would use friendster. or, well, let's face it, the purported reason you're on friendster is that you want new friends. so you obviously aren't totally satisfied with your friends (i know this isn't true, i know probably most people are on there for kicks.) it follows that the portraits your friends paint of you are not viewed, by you, to be entirely accurate. and that you're looking for people who see novel things in you.
but enemyster.com? i don't know what the perceived good qualities of the person i want is (well, okay, wicked smart, but that's said about so many people who just aren't), but i know what perceived bad qualities they should have. they should be blunt, tactless, insomniac, and have a screw loose. they should be nerdy (though there is an interesting trend in today's society where "nerdy" is becoming a positive attribute), obsessive, and have a messy room.
i think a lot more is said about my personality by who doesn't like me than by who does. generally the people who don't like me are people who act older than their age. people who wear cologne. people who think i'm an immature twerp. and yes, it's true, i'm a kid and i will always be a kid and i do not care for the system-gaming quirks of maturity. (obviously i don't know the right deprecating verbiage for my side of the story.) i'm naive, to be sure, but i surround myself with people who the naive person should surround themselves with. i simply don't like the sort of person who would be manipulative, so it works out very well.
but back to friendster. i guess the main point of it is to gawk about people and read what your friends have to write about themselves without forcing the issue. it's always interesting to read what people view themselves as, and to get gossip which stirs up your image of someone. should i join friendster? i certainly like doing this stuff, but on the other hand it seems like another needless obsession/complication for my life. what i want in a friend is simple -- i want to hang out doing nothing in particular on a lawn or a beach or a piazza and shoot the proverbial conversational breeze. i want to drive with the windows open and the music blaring and enjoy the moment. (i haven't found anyone i'm actually comfortable doing that with -- my fault, largely, since i always feel the social pressure to be interesting when i'm around others.)
i wonder if friendster will help me find these people. i've never had a knowing-someone-online go anywhere unless my memory has a grievous omission. because you always end up with a contrived, made-up world, and it's hard to have that slip naturally into real life. the first meeting is going to define that first impression anywhere and it's probably better that it happen in a void rather than with overanalyzed expectations looming in the background, with a vague picture already in one's mind ready to be smashed. i don't care how many words you have, you are only going to convey a few dimensions of yourself, and so you end up thinking of someone in terms of their hobbies and interests. but no one is really defined by their hobbies and interests; that doesn't give you any insight towards their conversational patterns or what minutiae they latch onto or find fascinating.
so ultimately i don't think e-friends are the way to go, are productive. then again nothing else particularly is either -- the beauty of friendship is that it's so magical and random anyway. and relationships even more so -- i mean to do an autobiographical retrospective in the capital letters section of this webpage sometime, so i won't talk in depth about it now, but the punchline is that i've met almost all of the girls i've dated at random. as in, change some very small thing and it's very possible that we would have never met at all, ever.