facebook and middle school social hierarchy

I got an email from a friend of mine the other day inviting me to join facebook. She sent it to our whole grad class as a way to keep in touch. I had heard about facebook, and figured, what the heck, that will be more fun then lesson planning, I'll go sign up. Well, in a matter of minutes I found I was reduced to the social maturity level of a middle schooler. As I was looking through my friend's friends I linked to other people I knew, then I went down a road I should have left untravelled. I started searching for people, just to see if they were members. Now, that probably sounds harmless. Then when you discover that an old crush has over 100 friends, and there I sit with only 1, suddenly I'm an embarrased loser. But I can't ask these people to be my friends because then they would see that I only have one friend. I'm 24 years old, in May I'll have a masters degree, I should be secure enough in who I am to not care about any of this, yet browsing through the facebook pages I began to feel like a 13 year old again. Sure I only joined today, and sure in the real world I have more than one friend, but how would anyone now that. It's right there in writing, I have one friend. Facebook furthers this middle school mindset for me, by doing the internet equivalent of passing a circle note. I can ask someone to be my friend but they have to circle (or click, whatever) yes or no to determine if we do in fact get to be friends. What will being friends mean? Most likely nothing, it will simply add to the number of people listed as friends under my name. What if the unthinkable happens, what if I ask someone to be my friend and they say no, will I ever recover?? We'll see how this all works out for me. I'm thinking that by tomorrow I will look back and laugh at this ridiculous moment of childishness, and may or may not log into facebook again. However, I got a nice reminder of how great it is to not be in middle school anymore. As hard as I claim my 20's are. . . that was worse.