social networking and too much information
The world is abuzz with orkut, the latest friendster (other recent friendsters include tribe and myspace). They're all similar in certain ways, but with various differences; orkut though has something new: your friends can rate how trusty/cool/sexy you are anonymously. This many2many post discusses the artificiality of these social networking tools' insistence on explicitness, and you see it especially in who we "friend" and what we say about them.
If my social circle includes someone I don't like, I can ambiguously avoid him in social situations; but when he friends me on orkut, social pressures may lead me to friend him back. And similarly with testimonials, where I'll tend to err on the side of effusiveness.
But along comes orkut and its friend ratings. Since they're anonymous, we can suppose they're honest. And therein lies the problem; do I really want to know I am trusty but not sexy? did you really need to find out everyone thinks you are cool but doesn't trust you? How much would you pay to get your delusions back?
It reminds me of the brief and hilarious tangent in "Infinite Jest" (set in the near future) about the development of the video phone -- on the phone, we live in a fantasy world where we can pay half attention, doodling or watching tv, while believing the other person is fully interested in us. When the advent of videophones makes this illusion untenable, the whole thing breaks until eventually people cover up their cameras and return, happily, to their delusions.