When I created my own Facebook account a few months back, I thought it was the coolest thing on earth. I could join the exclusive NTU network and it made me feel high and mighty because it's not something any random ah beng on Friendster could. Happily I started finding and adding friends - and by extension of that, anyone who are vaguely friends. But very soon, it became a drag because I found myself building a second Friendster network all over again. When I ran out of people to boost my friends count, I didn't know what to do with it anymore. So my Facebook died, as did my Friendster once upon a time.

And then it got resuscitated shortly after school reopened and Facebook exploded in popularity among the new undergrads around me. That was accompanied by a deluge of invitations to play with an assortment of Facebook applications. Which are somewhat interesting and they set Facebook apart from Multiply and Friendster, except they come across ridiculously trashy to me. Most of them anyway. Some are really good, like the one that allows you to do a virtual stock exchange not very unlike the lovely HonTrade. But all I have been receiving are a mix of rubbish that runs the gamut from casting a spell to growing a flower to decorating a room to turning others into a zombie. At this age, I don't see how all these are very different from playing Neopet.

Whenever I log on these days, I feel humbled seeing how the pages of my friends are swelling with applications and they are receiving gifts and drinks and whatnot all the time, of which I have none. Nobody writes on my wall, nor do I ever interact with the groups I joined. And I feel the twinge because I am like the outcast in this social network. Perhaps I shouldn't be there in the first place.