After two users decided to eBay their Friendster connections, i wrote them to understand their motivations. One responded with a response that still makes me smile (yes, i have a sore spot for folks who can meta into theory).

The reason the idea of selling access to your friends network was so appealing to me is that it concretizes the commodification inherent to Friendster. The two most addictive attributes of the site are the collecting of Friendsters and the ongoing process of packaging your profile. The only real shortcoming is that the ‘self’ you’re packaging on Friendster is a strictly delimited individual – but when I’m selling my network on ebay, the value is determined by my extended self, definedby its relationships and surfaces rather than content – in other words, the true me, in its full, fragmented, postmodern glory, all the more true the instant a dollar value is placed on it!

One also responded to Gawker:

if you bid and win then i will be able to hip you to the extreme levels of coolness of which you have only dreamed. i am in the center of LA HIP whirlwind nonsense. ask around, find out who i am, come to LA and meet me. believe that i know what words come from which week or month and exactly when they ended. try checking out some of the stuff that you are trying to be hipper than. acting like your over something that just started last week is a long standing tradition in LA. in fact we might say its passe’, very last year. interest is the new apathy. feel free to use anything i say to you, i’m sure its much easier to use others material than to have to say this is stupid over and over again all day long.” No, no, no, my friend (or my friendster, as it were.) New York has the ultimate advantage in acting like we’re over something that just started last week. We control the media industry. You don’t know it’s cool until we tell you it’s cool. But I do like “interest is the new apathy.