MWF Seeks BFF

Recently when I was trolling the Internet for new friends (that sounded better in my head) I came across a blog I liked so much that I wanted to impress the blogger and so worked very hard on a comment to her post. Something pithy and provocative that would catch her eye. She chooses to write her blog anonymously and doesn’t respond to comments so imagine my surprise when she emailed me saying I’d made her laugh. Hurrah!! Sad to say this provided me with almost as much pleasure as getting a job offer. Now this woman and I email each other on a semi-regular basis making us what I believe is known as e-friends or cyber friends.

This might not be worth writing about except it’s the second friend I’ve met online and the first is someone I really just need to get off my ass and visit because we’ve been communicating via email for almost six months and are pretty sure we’re related based on our misanthropic hermit-like tendencies and bitchy humor. Except she doesn’t like to shop and I don’t follow sports but still.

My point is that in this electronic age it seems easier to make friends online and yet, I still crave a human connection. I believe that if either of these women would stop being so stubborn and just move to Portland already we’d be lunching, bitching, and drinking our way to besties heaven.

Instead of learning something from letting Lifetime steal my idea (yes, I will beat that horse past death) I’m going to jump in again and put two brilliant ideas out there for someone else to hijack. Let’s be honest, the odds on me ever acting on my ideas are slightly less than me winning a Pulitzer. Both would be nice but aren’t likely to happen.

One, companies are making millions off online dating sites so why not the same thing for friends? You know: MWF/SWF seeks BFF. You create a personal profile, state where you live, and go for it. It would mean instead of knowing two awesome women 5 states away I might meet more people here. And because we’re just dealing with women  we wouldn’t have potential friends lying about their height or posting photos from 5 years ago. Requests would include things like: will tell me the truth if something I’m about to purchase makes me look like Bea Arthur or will go see another dance themed movie despite knowing there is no plot because we just like watching dancing.

Two, if that’s too much effort why not speed friending? You sign up, show up at a bar with, say, 50 other women, are given a name tag and a drink and while one group of women stays stationary the other 25 move from woman to woman in 3 minute intervals. Seriously, I’ll know if I like you in 30 seconds and I think most women are the same way. I don’t care what you do, your age, or if you’re lactose intolerant but you’d better make me laugh. If there’s a connection you exchange numbers and wham! new friend.

These are great, right? If you’re reading and have the gumption to actually run with either of these ideas please just give me some small cut of the profits because if not I will find out (I’m a researcher, remember?) and hunt you down. Unless you make me laugh and then we’ll be BFFs.