Hi there,

Welcome back to my blog. Well before beginning this article I would like to say that I hope everybody enjoyed 2009 and I wish all of you a happy new year. Hopefully it holds more ‘good’ than 2009.

I would like to talk to you about social sites today. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve been on my myspace or facebook before. (If you haven’t, www.facebook.com/ibrahamavedissian ) .. see, we’re addicted. Okay, back to what I was saying. I started with MySpace.com a while back, and to be honest, I was addicted. I built so much hype with all the photography/video work on myspace that at some point I hit 35,000 friends.  After a while, myspace died out, and facebook.com started to become popular, so I started to add close people, then their friends, and had all of them invited to join my new “fan page”. After almost reaching 1,000 fans, I realized that I had INVITED these people to be fans of me instead of them wanting to become fans of my work. I then decided to make a new page, not invite anybody, and let people do what they feel is right.

My main topic is about the way some online-celebs treat their “friends”. Many ‘online-celebs’ have had this “add people online, become their friends in real life” going on. I’ve been asked many times before about the reason why I didn’t say hi to some people. I’ve received messages saying “hey I saw you at bla bla yesterday” and I would usually reply by saying “ah, nice =) Come say hi next time.” .. I then realized that most of the ‘online-celebs’ are pulling this off and trying to become friends with every person they meet with online. I still haven’t changed my quote, and I still welcome you to come and say hi and introduce your self, I would love meeting you. However, don’t expect me to come and say hi to you if it was a first meeting. As hypocrite as this might sound, in a situation like this, I’m an anti-social. First of all, I don’t know you personally, so having seen your picture on my facebook homepage doesn’t allow me to come and invade your privacy and say hi to you. I might’ve read a status you had posted that showed up on my facebook wall, but I still don’t think that’s enough of a reason for me to come to you in person and say hi. I find that rather freaky, although it’s a must in business.

What I’m trying to say is that, I’m sorry if I had added you and you felt forced to join something you didn’t want to. I hope you ignored my “request”. All of us have their private lives and so do I. I do understand where your ideas come from, for I have some as well. I go through these private sessions with my self as well. I have met many great people online, and then have met them in person. Some turned out to be great friends, and some turned out to be a different kind of breed.

Some people show up with my photos printed with them and ask me where I took the picture. This makes my day! And my thoughts are “damn, that’s pretty cool!” I don’t expect that to happen and it’s great when it does. If you have a question or want to say hi because you feel comfortable, please come and do so. Just don’t expect me to do that first because I either will not remember who you are (unless we’ve met in person before, then that’s definitely different), or I just won’t feel comfortable enough to say hi to a “social friend”.

Stay good, you guys are great. Thank you for who ever had/has/will always support my work and I hope that I never disappoint.

Much love,

Apo Avedissian