How well do you know your social network? I mean seriously, how well do you know the people you come in contact with on your Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In accounts every day? If I go to your profile and click on your "friends," can I make the assumption that these people are somehow actually in some way known by you?

I can tell you that my social network standards live up to the bare minimum of integrity. I'll approve anyone who doesn't spam me with updates about their weekly comedy shows. If you go to one of my various online social networking profiles you'll find that the majority of the people listed as "friends" are, in fact, my actual friends, or people I have met on my travels or at work. But many of them are strangers, people who read my blogs or people whom I've seen around but never really spent any actual time with.

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Sometimes a friend will ask me what I know about this or that person in my network, and I'll tell her if I can vouch for them or not. If you want to sign up to hear my asinine status updates about my latest blog entry, then you're more than welcome to be my friend.

All Up in Your Facebook
I'm vulgar, conservative (relatively speaking), a little bit crazy, and have very strong opinions on things. Sometimes I just say things to piss people off if I'm bored and a little bit mean. I upload a ridiculous amount of photos and videos of my dogs doing nothing of any particular interest, and I try to network a lot of homeless animals.

Why am I on these social networks? Why are you on yours? Who cares? In the old days we had to get up in the morning and tend to the crops and the animals to make food for the day, but now we just make a 20-minute trip to Trader Joe's for food, leaving us with 23 hours and 40 minutes to tend to our various social media sites.

Keep Your Friends Close and Your Facebook Friends Close-ish
Most of my friends seem to feel that we can honestly trust about 90 percent of our Facebook "friends." The other 10 percent we can't personally vouch for, but feel safe enough to approve the friend request. I've had a couple of stalkers on Facebook. I've had people I don't know friend me, then friend all my friends and family, then start leaving lots of bizarre, vaguely personal comments as if we were close. When that happens I just block them. You never know where that could go, and I don't want to know.

Sometimes people get really pissed off at my status updates. A lot of people take umbrage when I talk about Michael Jackson's questionable past with young boys or say things like, "Chris Brown is a scumbag." I don't see why anyone could possibly get all riled up over something that I say. I'm just a dopey blogger with a C+ average in school. There are far more influential people saying far more disturbing things to get your panties in a wad over. Why would you waste your energy chewing me out because I think Chris Brown is a horrible person? Why would I waste time expressing my thoughts on Chris Brown?

It's a tangled Web we weave. So I guess what I'm saying is ... be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter!

To do: Find more social networks to join. Maybe Bebo ...