Okay, so we've established that I probably spend too much time on the Internet. I do, however, know that blogs, MySpace, and Facebook are all supposed to do different things. As a result, many of my "LJ Friends" are people I will never, ever meet in real life. I read their blogs because I like the way they write.

MySpace may have started out as a way to keep track of your "real life" friends, but in practice a lot of people have tens of thousands of "friends," and in my case about half my MySpace friends are people I only know on the Internet. The rest of them are bands. I like being able to listen to their music and check for gigs.

Now, Facebook: that's definitely intended to keep track of your real-life friends. And with very few exceptions, the only people I've asked to be my Facebook friends are people I really do know in real life. Okay--in a few cases they're people I knew a long, long time ago.

And okay, in a few cases they're people I know from the Internet.

But for the most part, I do not do the MySpace or LJ thing of trying to add people just because I find them interesting. I do, however, join groups for bands in hopes of finding out about their upcoming gigs. (I seriously love Facebook "events.")

Last week or so, though, I got a friend invitation from someone I am pretty sure I don't know, and when I investigated I discovered he's a member of a local band I have heard of and mean to check out one day, but have not yet. I assume he's going through membership lists of groups devoted to other local bands and adding new friends so he can invite them to join his band's group.

I debated about half a second before I accepted his friend invitation, and I discreetly bypassed the "how do you know this person?" question Facebook asks you, because actually I don't. And then, of course, I joined the group. Because hey.

I'm retaining my policy of not asking people to be my Facebook friend unless I'm pretty confident they do consider me to be their friend, but it turns out I don't have any sort of a policy against other people asking me. And apparently I see Facebook at least partly as a convenient means to find more music to listen to, which is pretty much half my reason for being on the Internet in the first place.

Well, as long as we're all clear, I guess that's fine.