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96 danah boydaccept Friend requests from strangers rarely interact with these peopleonline, let alone offline, the same concerns that keep teens from interactingwith strangers online also keep them from including strangers intheir lists of Friends. Yet fear is not the only reason teens choose to denystrangers.Trevor, a seventeen-year-old working-class white boy from a suburb innorthern California, says he added only people he knew in the physicalworld to his Friends list on MySpace because “I don’t want anyone on herethat I don’t know” (C. J. Pascoe, Living Digital). By denying strangers,Trevor reinforces MySpace’s claim that it is “a place for friends.” He thinksthat people who accept requests from those they do not know are trying“to seem more popular to themselves.” Trevor is not alone in his criticismof those who are open with their Friends lists. Mark, a white fifteenyear-oldfrom Seattle, complains that “there’s all these people that judge[MySpace] as a popularity contest and just go around adding anyone thatthey barely even know just so they can have like, you know, 500,000friends just because it’s cool. I think that’s stupid, personally.” Those whocollect large numbers of Friends on MySpace are derogatively called“MySpace whores.” While this term is both gendered and sexualized innature and those loaded references are sometimes intended, it is appliedto both boys and girls and refers to attention seekers of all types, not justthose seeking sexual attention.The vast majority of those who collect large numbers of Friends areadults—musicians, politicians, corporations, and both real and wannabecelebrities. Teen musicians and activists sometimes collect Friends for thesame purposes as public-facing adults—to connect with fans and developa following. Teens also do so as a form of entertainment or competitionamong friends. These teens are not interested in developing friendshipswith those they include as Friends; they simply collect them because it issomething to do. One boy said that it is fun to see which attractive womenwould say yes to his Friend requests. Collecting attractive women is socommon that spammers started making fake profiles of attractive womento lure men.Mass Friend collecting is just one of the practices of connecting withstrangers. Teens commonly send Friend requests to bands and celebrities.Teens do not believe that such connections indicate an actual or potentialfriendship, but they still find value in these Friends. Bands and celebrities