I think you guys are completely misinterpreting the intention of the original post. All I mean is, how many people are people you actually know/care for/want on your Facebook list, and how many people are like this
About 10 are random people on the internet who just use "add friend" on everyone
and what do you use to determine whether someone is a real friend on your facebook or just someone you just kind of added for some reason and wouldn't actually talk to/communicate with/whatever (though you might not communicate with friends who are actually friends too, but that could be for different reasons besides "this is just some random person/a friend of a friend/a family member of a friend that I added").
sorry for the confusion, I think it was the quote that did it so it's my fault (it does mention "digital friendships"). it's fine to discuss it, just an FYI. as for my opinion, while online friends are great in various ways, it does frustrate me that I can't interact with them face-to-face... well, there's video calling, but you know what I mean-in-person and not via the internet. They can't give me a place to stay for the night, they can't hang out with me at a park or at the gym or at the movies, they can't give me real brofists or hugs and whatnot, there's a lot they can't do (barring the exception of meeting them in-person which isn't feasible for most online friends). Seraph is probably my longest-standing friend and one of my best friends overall and he's a guy who lives on a completely different continent, and I pretty much value most of you as friends (even if I don't know you all too well), so I certainly value my online friends a lot. I could go as far as saying that they supported me a lot more than my "IRL" ones ever did and I'd probably be a lot worse off if not for them. At the same time, there were a lot of times they couldn't be there for me a lot of things they couldn't do, so having IRL friends is also important.
I guess tl;dr each fills in certain gaps in my needs/wants or something and I appreciate them both. they could both go on my facebook friend list. but random strangers who just want to contact me once about something, get as many friends on their list as possible, etc., I tend to not add those for the most part, unless I feel like I'd insult someone by doing so (it's weird and annoying and the whole social networking thing as a whole can be too subtly convoluted and frustrating that I just don't deal with it anymore, like a lot of people).
...
checked
32 friends on my fake account
288 on my actual, with like, 11 pending requests
granted, I quit in High School and even then I mostly would only add people I knew that weren't "too close to me like family or family friends", so yeah
if I added all the people I met in College and such I'd probably have closer to 500 friends, but alas, I stopped using Facebook
even if I wanted to get back into it, it'd be super awkward now. like, haven't talked to these people in years, hardly anything in common, and with new people, they could check my profile and see all my embarrassing posts and other nonsense... T_T NO THANKS, it's easier to just not deal with that then try to build relationships, sadly. maybe if my friends peer pressured me into getting back into facebook, I would, but thankfully they don't, so even though it's a bit sad, I'm kind of content without it. I only really "miss it" the 3-4 times a year I think about it, and I don't even miss it that much, lol