While Burger King's recent attempts at surreal edginess — "Whopper Virgins," anyone? — aren't going to raise many eyebrows, the fact that "Whopper Sacrifice" involved a notification that you'd been cut for a burger caught Facebook's attention: as everyone knows, people aren't normally told when you un-friend them, one of the few things that keeps the delicate ecosystem functioning. And, not unexpectedly, the scrutiny has opened something of a philosophical can of worms: what is a "friend?" Should you cull ruthlessly, or be generous? And what's the protocol? Justifies a marketer behind "Whopper Sacrifice" to the NY Times, “It seemed to us that it quickly evolved from quality of friends to quantity...which was interesting to us because it felt like the virtual definition of a friend became something different than the friends that you’d want to hang out with.”

Well, yeah. Nowadays those who keep their lists down to an exclusive circle of real friends are in the minority; even if you don't solicit friends yourself you're likely to be found by random elementary-school classmates or old coworkers — and it seems unkind to deny someone who's taken the time to search you out! Most people I know maintain an "everyone within reason" policy and have resigned themselves to distancing Facebook from anything truly personal. And among people under 20, it's standard for "friend" lists to top 300. Some folks I know feel somewhat misled; at first they accepted all requests because they felt honored; now, a year later, they see these relationships as reflections of a culture's diminishing currency.

And then the editing starts. Some Facebook expert tells the Times he "recommends culling your friend list once a year to remove total strangers and other hangers-on. Keeping your numbers down gives you more leeway to be selective about whom you approve in the first place." Part of the rationale for this discrimination is that, as a piece in today's Wall Street Journal makes clear, sites like Facebook are increasingly prone to hacking. "The popularity of social networks and social media sites has grabbed the attention of cyber crooks searching to pilfer passwords, called "phishing," and steal sensitive personal information. The hackers are exploiting users' sense of safety within these sites," and a smaller network could mean, hypothetically, a smaller risk.

But, at this juncture, is such an approach really practical? Whatever people wanted Facebook to be, now isn't it what it is: less a portrait of who you are than a loosely-drawn map of your history, your interests, your associations? Does anyone go to someone else's page expecting to see only bosom friends? No: for the most part you assume you're seeing a collection of friends, acquaintances and strangers, and we've become as adept at reading and interpreting these as a more straight-forward breakdown. If you want privacy, quite frankly, don't join a networking site anymore. As to unfriending, I get it, but it does seem to me a tad cowardly: much more honest, it seems, to reject someone in the first place. Whopper or not.

Friends, Until I Delete You [New York Times]

Beware of Facebook 'Friends' Who May Trash Your Laptop [Wall Street Journal]

Sites like Askville, Wiki.Answers, Funadvice and many others do indeed play host to a multitude of queries on anything from emotional problems to pet care to home repair -all, of course, best answered by strangers without technical expertise. Slatalla emphasizes the importance of weeding through the morass of information: “If somebody posts something that’s wrong, sooner or later someone else will write ‘That’s wrong and here’s the right answer,’ ” she said. “It’s a self-policing community.” So, how come some of us never use them?

Here are the latest questions on Yahoo Anwers: "Need help in anatomy plz ?" ,"What should i name my crested gecko breeding company and i need some names for the babies?", "What is a good new school mascot idea?" "Any Vodafone users in India??? plz help me?"

So, yeah, obviously people use these sites. But, like, is this their main resource? Are they just checking these sites as a kind of additional "ask the crowd" consensus? And what is this a substitute for? The library? Or, in the case of the more personal questions — are these sites taking the place of human interaction or serving as a source of connection for people who otherwise would have none? All of the above, probably. And even for those of us who read these sites more out of idle curiosity than for information, it's probably a comfort we're not even aware of to know that answers are literally at our fingertips. And maybe the accuracy of the answers isn't even the point; I remember in a very low moment searching "cures for heartbreak" and although the answers were trite and not terribly helpful, it was somehow comforting to see how many others had searched the same thing, and kind of heartwarming that people had cared enough to share the strategies they'd found helpful.

But as to "the internet" as a personality? Far from some kind of all-knowing presence, most of us see the Internet as that windbag crackpot everybody knows with theories on everything. It's useful, obviously, as a compendium of information — having all the journals and recipes and actual experts' advice in one place. And maybe that's a fundamental divide: those of us who see the internet primarily as a technological resource, and those who see it as something more living, warmer, and personal — even if we aren't conscious of these attitudes. Do you go to an "answers" source with a question and get a flawed, human perspective, or hit the search engines for a compendium of more official information? If I wanted to be cute, I'd pose this question to a bunch of the info sites and see what people said. But 'consensus philosophy' seems like a good place for the buck to stop.

Dear Stranger: It’s 4 a.m. Help! [NYT]