Too many "friends"?!

Today, while studying at my University library, I saw a girl that might have been someone I knew from two years ago. (Actually, at this point, from Facebook stalking, I know she is the girl I knew two years ago, damn.)

We met when I was in high school, we were from different schools, but we both participated in an extra curricular outside of school. I worked with her on our project (with other people) for more than half a year. We met weekly, and sometimes put in extra time and met outside of the required time because we were both keeners and wanted to do well on our project.

Well, today, I found out that she goes to the same university as me (from seeing her, and then later checking on Facebook that she does in fact go to my school). It sucks how people drift apart as people move on with their separate paths, and you may never see them again, if not for seeing them on Facebook.

Currently, I have 660 (ish) "friends". Most aren't friends, but rather people I know. However, I can confirm that I have met all 600+ people in person before adding them as a friend. There was a period in time where I accepted friend requests just because they were people from my school. It didn't matter that we never talked, I just thought "why not?" maybe they'll become famous one day and I'll have the priviliage of saying "so and so and I were Facebook 'friends'".

Friends. What does that word even mean nowadays?

What I am concerned of right now is maybe I'll run into an acquaintance on Facebook one day in real life, and I'll forget who they were.

It's actually happened before. I was on an escalator going down, and the other person was on the escalator going up. And he said my name, but I forgot who he was, I didn't even remember his face! I forced a smile at the time, but this bothered me for the whole day. I later found out who he was, and we had only met once before, which sort of gives me an excuse for not remembering who he was... I guess.

Anyway, I'm going on a "friend" delete tonight. Before, I had been an advocate of keeping as many ties as possible, because it meant having a bigger network, and that meant more opportunities if I'm looking for a job or something. But now, I'm worried about my privacy, and having too many people to keep track of. Da Vinci once said "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication", thus I am simplifying my life with a smaller friends list on Facebook.