There are people who would outwardly and proudly diminish a term, removing all of its substance and attainment, to satisfy some inner quest of personal fulfillment, despite their paradox of self-satisfaction and reality….

Friend Collector [frend] [kuh-lek-ter] noun:

  1. A person who adds enormous amounts of people on their social networking pages just for the sake of having enormous amounts of people on their social networking pages for (another) sake of believing they are cool or better or more popular than everyone else.
  2. A person who ignores you when you try to talk to them because they think they are better than you due to the large amount of friends they have on their friends list.
  3. A person who clicks on “add friend” buttons without knowing the person they are adding.
  4. A person who clicks on “add friend” buttons without ever meeting the person they are adding.
  5. A person who thinks they are special in reference to their social network microcosm.
  6. A person who has no actual friends; attracts mindless lemmings.

Origin: After 2005; American English friend collector (friend collector, friend collecting, friend collected). Related terms include; friend whore, friend whoring, pedo bear, glitter gatherer, wannabe, Eslut, comment whore, so-so lonely.

Before we start, let’s exclude from this definition all famous people, professional athletes, models, movie stars, musicians, comedians, bloggers, promoters, or anyone else whose career is based on vein popularity of social media and its blind adding of people to their sites and pages to promote themselves or their cause, product, or talent.  With that said, if you are not one of these people listed above and you find yourself adding people (in large amounts) to your social media websites who you don’t know, there is a good chance you meet the criteria of a Friend Collector.

I guess I was lucky that Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Myspace weren’t popular or didn’t exist when I was in high school and college, so I didn’t feel compelled to add every person in my class every year to my friends list.  But I get it; kids these days add everyone they meagerly associate with in order to keep the status quo of their classmates years to come (a friend of a friend is a friend).  Kids will be kids, but what is your excuse?

There is only one excuse that I will allow non-students to get away with without being labeled a friend collector; Internet Stalking.  Internet Stalking is a fun, safe, and easy way to stalk someone without potentially going to jail for actually stalking someone.  What better way to Internet Stalk someone than to add them as friends on all your favorite social media sites?  With Twitter, they don’t even need to accept your friendship; you can just follow them and stalk away!  You gain access to all their information, photos, and friend lists for your stalking pleasure, and for me, this makes Internet Stalking the only legitimate reason you would ever add anyone without knowing or meeting them.

This leads us to our topic, Friend Collecting.

Friend collecting is a serious problem.  Friend collectors find substance in quantity rather than quality.  There are two types of friend collectors.  The first type looks for acceptance and validity in people they don’t know and believe that adding more people to their friends list will add more validity to their life; a low self-esteem problem.  The second type believes they are at the center stage of the universe and owe it to people to friend them in order to grace those people with their presence; a false sense of high self-esteem problem.  In both types of friend collectors, the person doing the friend collecting enters status updates on their social media pages in a hope to get positive reaction, no matter the content.  The more people exposed to the status update (the larger the friends list), the more potential for approval or likes, and for the friend collector, the more valid the status update becomes.  Unfortunately for our friend collectors, no one in real life gives a fuck.  And if you find yourself meeting some of the criteria of a friend collector and you are not famous or actively stalking someone, you should realize too, that no one gives a fuck how many friends are on your friends list.  That’s it.  No one gives a fuck about your Internet friends you blindly seek approval from.  No fucks should ever be given to friend collectors and guess what, usually no fucks are.

….There was a time when having a few good friends meant you were lucky.  Before cell phones and social media, before email and texting, friends spent real time together.  You were a part of their life and making the choice to spend time with one another meant there was a bond of trust, commitment and/or love behind the friendship.  The modern world has destroyed the term friend.  They use “friend” to lure people into thinking something or someone is of importance, when in reality they are not.  No honorable person has a “List of friends.”  Friends should have an identity and have a purpose in your life, not listed in alphabetical order on some screen.  Meet people, friend them on your social media pages, but remember every time you collect a “friend” you don’t know, it takes away from the friends you do know.