Random musing on friends' lists

I gotta agree with griffen on this one: LiveJournal very much didn't pay enough attention to nomenclature when they decided to use the term "friend" to mean "person whose LiveJournal I read and who reads my LiveJournal in return."

Sure, a lot of the people on my friends' list are in fact my friends, but a lot of them are just interesting people whose journals I like to read and with whom I like to interact. I'm sure that most of these people don't view me as a bosom buddy, or even as much of an acquaintance.

But even so, the term "friend" means that you do end up taking it personally when someone "unfriends" you, or never bothers to reciprocate when you "friend" them.

I have nineteen people on my friends list who don't list me back as a friend. I don't know these people from Eve, and yet it still hurts in a vague way. Some of them have unfriended me, most of them just never added me back. It makes that small, irrational part of your mind ask: "Why am I not worthy? Am I not interesting enough? Do I write too much, too little, the wrong things?"

Then your rational mind takes over, delivers you a swift kick in the ass and tells you to get off the pot, that in 99% of the cases it has nothing to do with you.

Still, it doesn't prevent me from running like mad every time someone declares they're pruning their friends' list to see if I've made the cut. Sad, really.

I don't know what word I'd use in the place of "friend." I'll have to give it some thought.