Friendships … In SL, they’re as loving, precarious, loyal, superfiscial, unconditional, awe-inspiring and forgettable as they are in real life.  No two of them are alike, and despite the pixels we hide behind, our unique humanity makes them all as beautiful and ugly as each of us are inside.

In our virtual world, they are valued by placement on our “friends list” — that telecommunication board that enables us to talk to anyone we wish to remember for all the reasons of business or pleasure there are in Second Life; and sometimes on “our picks,” that place in our profile meant for favorite places, but often used for favorite people, or to memorialize special moments of virtual living in real time.

Because of the very real feelings that people have toward each other in Second Life, that “list” has a very emotional value placed on it by many who spend a good deal of time logged on.  When we want to share something we saw or heard or experienced, we’re often moved to click our “communicate” button to share.  And, on rare occasions, we’ll pop up that list to share with a friend or acquaintance … only to find that they’re no longer there.

That’s happened to me a couple of times recently; and both times, it stung a little, but tapered off quickly to just a feeling of curious amusement.  Neither were people I spoke to with any frequency, and with the last one, I just laughed it off and went about my business.  With the first … I IM’d him immediately to find out what had happened.

“We never talk,” he said, without elaborating.

“Uhm, okay.” I replied, knowing he was lying.  Never apparently included a few weeks prior when he had popped in my store, and we shared a conversation for about half an hour about things in our lives and in the real world.  The real truth — I discovered later — was that he had recently split with the friend we shared in common, the person I was introduced to him by.

The second one was a similar case … a friend of a friend just disappeared from my list.  We had only chatted a few times at clubs and so forth, but he had also been to my home a time or two with our common friend.  This friend-in-between recently asked me to bury the hatchet …

“What hatchet?” I replied.  “I just signed on one day, and he was gone.  I never did anything to him.”

I pressed for more answers, and was told the other guy doesn’t “do fake friends.”

This one floored me.  For starters, I have no delusions of being an SL celebrity, but I am often very, very busy while in world.  At last count, I had over five hundred people on my friends list — I’m not bragging, I’m aware of people with much larger lists.  But … okay … 500 people on a list, and only so many hours a day I can be online.  There’s no way I have time to be cuddle-buddies with each and every one of them — god knows I neglect my close friends on SL to the point I find myself apologizing quite frequently.

But, somehow, being a polite acquaintance to this one was taken as being a disingenuous friend.

Then I recall my own cleansings-of-the-list.  I’ve been on SL for two and a half years; this being my second main avatar.  Up until the last thirteen or fourteen months, I would purge my list completely every time a guy would break my heart.  Reason?  I was leaving Second Life never ever to return … and I wanted them all to know I was leaving … to feel my pain!  Yes … I was a major drama queen back in the day, and a few say that still hasn’t changed.  Well, except for the mass list cleansings and the back-to-back soap opera romances (which have also slowed considerably in the last year … and matured).

That’s not to say I still don’t remove people from time-to-time.  On occasion, I’ll go through the list … and when I see someone I absolutely can’t remember, someone I obviously met once and never followed up with, I’ll look through the profile for any redeemable information.  Is this person a business contact?  A friend of a friend?  If the profile is wiped clean, I’ll usually delete it since the presence of nothing usually means the person has abandoned the account.

And, when personal or business relationships go sour to the point of no redemption — I remove the temptation for either party to throw darts at each other.  Often, weeks later, we’ll kiss and make up later when we see each other at a party … laughing at our ridiculous emotional outbursts, and our paranoid delusions about the other.

But, that’s the new me.  I delete only after careful consideration or with very good cause … because I know how it feels to be on the other end.  But, how harshly can I judge those few immature residents who react with such absolute virulence to slights so obviously perceived?

Not by much.  I wouldn’t like those three fingers pointing back at me.