Social networking is a weird phenomenon.

The reason my parents and grandparents don’t get it is because they don’t have the un-friends like me.

According to Facebook, I have 404 friends (a number I basically know and memorize every time it changes). My 75-year-old grandmother would probably tell me that she has eight or so friends, and she speaks to all eight of those friends weekly (if not daily). She snail mail’s them photos, occasionally e-mails to those more Web-savvy friends. She has plans to lunch with them, visit them, vacation with them… all of them. She shares stories with them and talks about them, a lot. Even though there are only eight, they are all real, live, honest-to-goodness friends. It would just be way too much effort for her to have un-friends using those traditional means of communication.

I can safely say that I have met only 300 of my 404 friends, at least once. I kind of know 200 of them. I like only 50 of them. I keep in touch with only 20 of them. I see and talk to (on a regular basis) only 15 of them.

So, out of my 404 Facebook friends, I’ve got 15 real friends and 389 un-friends who are friends. Yet they all know more about my day-to-day life than my grandma.

In the Oct. 26 New York Times Magazine article, “Facebook in a Crowd,” Hal Niedzviecki writes about his experience with friends who aren’t your friends. With 700 Facebook friends, Hal decided to throw a gathering at a local bar, inviting all of his Facebook friends to stop by and socialize. Fifteen of his friends said they were “definitely attending,” 60 said they were “maybe attending,” a few hundred said they were “not attending,” and the rest ignored the invite.

Hal figured that at least 20 people would definitely show up, given the responses. So he positioned himself at the bar on the night of the event and waited. Only one girl showed up, and it was so awkward that she eventually left, leaving Hal faux-friendless.

So, are friends who aren’t your friends just a good as the real thing? What would your grandma say?