There is much to discover on the Facebook, the online community for college students, such as which cute guy already has a girlfriend and which girl thinks she's hot but, whatever, check out her skanky picture. This state of online exploration might be called the Facebook Trance, and it can last for hours.
"You stare into it FOR-EV-ER," says Melissa Doman, a George Washington University sophomore, turning away from her laptop for a moment. "You lose all track of time."
She turns back to her computer, landing on the Facebook photo of one of her female peers.
"Eew!" she says.
There is great social wisdom to be gleaned from the Facebook, which went online at a small group of schools last winter and now is used by about a million students at nearly 300 colleges.
You can wander through profiles of people you wish you knew, imagining what they must be like. You can compare the number of "friends" you have listed in your profile to the number of "friends" your roommate has, to calibrate how good you should feel about yourself. If your number is low, you can message some people you met at last night's party, asking if they, too, will be your "friends." You can read all about that guy you like and discover that he, too, enjoys J. Crew and Weezer, which must mean you're fated to be together, assuming you at some point get a chance to introduce yourself.
Last year, before GW joined the Facebook network, Doman had a crush on a certain fellow who did not return her affections. After GW linked up in August, Doman looked up the young man's profile and discovered that he prefers to date other young men. This bit of reconnaissance assuaged her wounded ego.
"That explains it," she says.
Ever-changing yearbook
The Facebook, the invention of a group of Harvard students, provides everything today's savvy college kid needs. It maps out the cool kids and the purposeful freaks, the most popular music and the least -- important for those who value their music by its obscurity. It's like an ever-changing yearbook.
The Facebook allows anyone to fake the appropriate level of college nonchalance. If you fancy someone, the Facebook provides a list of friends you have in common, giving you a plausible excuse to contact them, and -- if they reject you -- the protection of online detachment. If you meet someone in class and can't remember his name, you can look him up on the class lists kept on the Facebook. You can research his interests, gathering information that you keep to yourself when you talk to him so he won't ever know you looked him up.
You can establish yourself in the clique structure by listing your interests ("guns," "making out," "pink shoes") and the Facebook "groups" you belong to, which anyone can create. They include names such as "Cancer Corner," for students who love to smoke, and "I Want to Be a Trophy Wife and You Can't Stop Me!" Each school that belongs to the Facebook has a different private network, inaccessible to outsiders, and on GW's network, there is a lively debate over the acceptability of turning one's polo shirt collar up. Almost a thousand students have demonstrated their brave nonconformism by joining anti-popped-collar groups, while a small segment aligns itself with the preppy ethos through a group called "Collars Up!"
"It really does help you kinda get to know people," says Anne Oblinger, a freshman who created the "Ann Coulter Fan Club" and also belongs to "Collars Up!," "Republican Princesses" and "Preppy Since Conception."
Getting to know people -- without their knowledge, of course -- can be a particularly useful tool during the first few weeks of freshman year.
"You would meet someone and you would just run upstairs and go online and type in their name," says Oblinger's sorority sister and fellow freshman Ali Scotti (interests: "shopping, Bill Clinton, wearing pearls"). "People call it the 'stalker book,' " she says.
Friend counts get competitive
The Facebook's friends section is, for some people, the most important of all. It lists the number of friends a person has at his or her own school and at other colleges that also belong to the Facebook. The Student Association president has 747 friends at GW alone. Some people watch the growth of their friend counts carefully.
"I'm not competitive," says Scotti, who has 157 friends at GW and more at other schools. "Well, okay, that's a lie. A little bit competitive."
It is not necessarily cool to admit this, especially since, as everyone who's used the Facebook knows, a high friend count is as much evidence of a willingness to hustle as it is proof of popularity.
Many students tell stories of waking up after a night of partying to find new "friend" requests from people they met in passing the night before, whose names they can barely remember. It is not unheard of to get a friend request from a perfect stranger. Sending a friend request is also known as "facebooking," and it offers the facebookee the choice of accepting or rejecting the request. People seldom reject friend requests, however -- it's considered rude, and besides, everyone wants a high number.
Melissa Doman (interests: "cuddling, shots") has 156 friends at GW, though "if you go to 'all schools,' " she points out, "I have 244, and I'm damn proud of that." She tells the story of how she once rode an elevator with a fellow student; she introduced herself and they spoke "like 20 words." When she next logged on to the Web site, she discovered he'd looked her up by her first name and "facebooked" her.
She scrolls to his picture now, on the laptop in her dorm room.
"Look at that!" she says. "He's really creepy."
Naturally, she confirmed the request.
Characterizing Facebook forwardness as creepy or merely friendly depends not only on the style of the approach but also on whether you're the one being forward. Doman and roommate Karla Lazo have both been offended by overly persistent members of the GW community, and Lazo likes to say that the Facebook can be a "weapon" in the hands of someone annoying. But Doman has also enjoyed a flattering instant message exchange with a nice stranger. They have both contacted boys whose profiles they found appealing, and in Doman's case, that has led to some romance. Doman's rule is that to approach a person, you must be connected to them through someone or something, if only tangentially.
"You don't contact someone who's really hot and you don't have anything in common with," she says.
Closed to outsiders
The trust that GW students place in the Facebook -- they have their full names and e-mail addresses in their profiles, and many list instant-message screen names and even cell phone numbers -- is possible because their online community is closed to outsiders. It's free but you must have a school e-mail address to register, and when you do, you get access only to the profiles of others in your school. Faculty, staff, alumni and graduate students also have access, but they tend not to use the Facebook in the overwhelming numbers that undergraduates do.
At GW, which has about 10,600 undergrads and 12,400 grad students, there are 8,520 registered users, according to one of Facebook's founders. (They hope the Web site will turn a profit sometime soon through the fees they charge for corporate ads and student announcements. Meanwhile, they have competition from similar Web sites.)
The Facebook has a way of taking over a school's culture. Students talk about checking their accounts four or five times a day, not only to research people but also to read private messages others have sent them through the Facebook network and to read comments others have scrawled on their virtual "walls." ("MEATWAD WAS HERE.") They talk about their morning ritual: wake up, go to the bathroom, check e-mail, check the Facebook. They talk about the Facebook's inexorable pull -- even for those who don't join.
"A lot of my church friends seem to be against Facebook," says Joe Karlya, a junior (favorite books: "the Bible," "The Image of Righteousness"). "My really good friend Tyler is against it, but every time he's over he has me sign into my account and he browses."
Students recognize that the Facebook can be a kind of end in itself, that it can create what one student calls "Facebook relationships," which exist only online. Doman, who majors in sociology and communications and says she looks at "everything from a relational aspect," labels the Facebook "communication lean."
It's all a little fake -- the "friends"; the profiles that can be tailored to what others find appealing; the "groups" that exist only in cyberspace. Doman's other roommate, Sarah Schafer, tried to join a group devoted to the "25 Hottest Girls" at GW. Some groups are open to everyone, but with other groups, you have to be approved to get in.
"I didn't get in," Shafer says. She consoles herself with the thought that the founder probably lets in only friends.
The television is tuned to MTV's "Room Raiders," but no one is watching. The roommates are deep into their individual computers, scrolling through more photographs of GW students.
"She's pretty," Schafer says.
"I facebooked this one guy," Doman says. They'd never met. He sent her a message: "Who are you?" She sent him a message back: "We thought you were hot."
She turns serious.
"You know, the more I'm talking to you, the more I'm disgusted with myself," she says. "This is an addiction."
"And a weapon," Lazo says soberly.
They don't look too upset.