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Social networking is absolutely key in college; if you don’t put yourself out there and make your own connections, don’t expect the social obligations to inundate your calendar. I experienced the fruits of this “labor” last year when I, reluctantly, decided to join one of those massive collegiate internet directories. You know the type; you put up some strange or flattering picture of yourself corresponding to your intentions, along with some arcane list of interests, data, etc. I tried to make my profile as interesting as possible, without being pretentious (god forbid!) and sat back to observe the effects of my cyber-leap.

Weeks, even months went by without any sort of significant social connection. I dutifully checked my hompage every day to see if anyone had sent me a message of interest. The only messages I received day in and day out, were from my bastion of faithful friends. Not to discredit their undeniable influence, but I was very disappointed. Friends were one thing, and could do a pretty good job of occupying your time, but they just weren’t quite the same as a “more than a friend...” you get my drift... I scanned and rescanned my profile, seeing if I could find any gaps or repellants. I found none. So, all I could do was wait.

An interesting thing this online social community does is it shows a literal chart of how you are connected to various individuals through friends, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends, and even friends of friends of friends of friends of friends. In fact, the degrees of connection are potentially endless. It can be overwhelming, but potentially exhilerating, having an infinite pool of potential relationships, both friendly and beyond...

One late night, or early morning, depending on how you look at it, I was idly staring at my homepage, when a message popped up; “You have been poked by Matt Grendel.” Poked? What the heck does poked mean? Is it a bad thing? Flirting? I clicked on the link in the message, curiously awaiting what lay beyond the “loading” screen. After what seemed like eons, a message popped up; “Hey. You don’t know me but I know you, kind of through a lot of people... I know your friend’s friend Sharon who’s pals with your roomate Angela. Anyway, I don’t mean to be creepy or anything, but would you like to meet up sometime? I saw your picture, and I think you and I could get along pretty well. Let me know. No rush. -Matt”

My initial reaction was to think; eew. What a creep. Why would he be “poking” me. Why me? Run away! But I struggled against my initial reactions, and “poked” him back. I went to sleep that night/ morning, thinking: how random was that? The very moment I had just about given up on finding at least one date, a random guy fell into my lap.

The next weekend, I was at dinner with the ever mysterious “Matt.” It turns out that he was remarkably similar to myself. Against all odds, I actually liked him. We had similar interests, similar goals. And to top it all off, he was really really really attractive. I guess I learned my lesson about random connections. As I like to say, never underestimate the six degrees of Kevin Bacon.

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