ROMANCE ONLINE Friendster's virtual degrees of separation BY ALEX PROVAN

I can’t remember the last time I was in a relationship that wasn’t facilitated via e-mail. For those who are shy, socially awkward, lacking in confidence — or who merely seem far more clever when their overtures are mediated by technology — the Internet has an undeniable cache in surpassing the eternally uncomfortable, "Well . . . it was nice meeting you. Do you want to go out sometime?"

Having an Internet alter ego offers the chance to redefine oneself with clarity unparalleled in the real world. And when it comes to online communities and dating services, few are as mutually attractive and hideous, engaging and alienating, inimitably hip and decidedly nerdy, as the ubiquitous Friendster (www.friendster.com).

Jonathan Abrams launched the California-based Web site in March. Friendster’s homepage promises to "connect people through networks of friends for dating or making new friends," and the site, perhaps not surprisingly, has become monstrously popular. A typical "real life" dating service might work as follows: you go in, complete a form with your interests and the qualities of those you’re seeking to befriend or bed, and perhaps videotape yourself expelling a few awkward phrases that will probably betray most of your shortcomings. Then some stranger categorizes and judges you, matching you up with other prospective Dear-God-I-don’t-want-to-live-the-rest-of-my-life-and-die-aloners.

Friendster eliminates the middleman, working more like a complex, multi-roomed party spiked with literary references and candid desire. Friendster’s modus operandi is degrees of separation. Users create profiles, filling out less than imaginative categories like, "interests," "interested in meeting people for," "favorite music," "about me," and "who I want to meet." These are usually replete with a variety of obscure references and overly clever monologues, not to mention confessions, proclamations, and explanations.

Users then begin to acquire "friends" through friends through "friends" — degrees of separation that go on until, before you know it, you’re sending a creepy message to someone in Brooklyn who is five degrees from your ex-girlfriend, but has recently received a testimonial from some guy you met when you were a counselor at that camp in Maine three summers ago.

So, dooes this preclude possibilities for real-life interactions? "I hope not," says Kent Lindstrom, Friendster’s chief operating officer. According to Lindstrom, the Internet has become so commonplace that meeting people through Friendster is "actually quite similar to meeting a friend of a friend at a bar." He adds, "People who don’t need help meeting people still go to dinner parties."

Friendster theorists, if such a thing exists, argue that in the constant striving for larger social networks, intimacy may be lost and social ties start to lose their meaning. The ability to travel through networks without greater involvement is like social tourism, and, like any tourist, the detached user can always flee.

Rachel Stevens, a visiting assistant professor of digital media production at Brown University, and a Friendster user, disputes the view that such networks pose a threat to real social interaction. "While, on the one hand, you could say that the loss of the traditional, tightly knit neighborhood or community based on geographic proximity is sad, you could also see access to wider and wider networks of people and . . . social circles based on interests as allowing people to extend their communities in very positive ways," Stevens says.

Other than the myriad inauthentic profiles — God, Sex, Ben Affleck, and Morrissey all have quite a few friends — Friendster profiles are surprisingly transparent compared to other dating services, making it seem more like a real community. Maybe this, too, is part of the draw. As Lindstrom says, "Friendster is for people who don’t want to be anonymous."