I'm Not Here to Make Friends

Sporadically for a year now, I've been working on a post about reality television contestants who "aren't here to make friends." It's a cliche that intrigues me because it's clearly a defense mechanism of vile individuals, as if to say that they could be friendly if that were their objective. Evidently, for some, the effort it requires to present oneself as pleasant distracts from winning a competition.

Thus far, I've compiled an incomplete list of contestants who hide behind the popular assertion. Ideally, the post culminates in me expressing my desire to see an ostracized contestant who distraughtly wails that she was, in fact, "here to make friends." Though atypical, it would be the most honest reaction of all. I mean, most of these media whores seek validation, be it through fame, money, and contrived romantic love, so it only makes sense that they'd secretly crave friendships with their brain-dead peers, too.

Occasionally I'll ponder it briefly, then edit it slightly before leaving it sitting in my "in progress" file (oh, the half-written blog posts you'll probably never see!) until I eventually repeat the process.

Well, that post will never see the light of day now that I found that I've already been one-upped. Four-upped, even. My blog idol Rich at Four Four (which many of you have discovered previously in my links section to the right) recently put together a video that highlights just how frequently the sentence is used.

I first stumbled upon Four Four because of it's truly phenomenal America's Next Top Model recaps/skewering. Rich, the writer, is multi-talented, however, and manages to address films, celebrity culture, and other trivial topics just as well as issues of race, sexuality, and politics. He seamlessly moves from intellectual to irreverent, and his audience adores him for it. I do tend to skip the tomes on hip hop albums and the videos of his cat, but otherwise I find Four Four a must-read.

Anyhoo, back to the video. Even if you aren't a fan of the genre, I bet you might find the variations on this theme intriguing.

I haven't watched even half of these programs to verify this fact, but a commenter on Rich's site claims that none of the contestants who uttered this catch phrase went on to win, making their attitudes all the more hilarious and pointless.

I might not be on a reality program, but I'm still committed to adopting the sentence into my lexicon. The next time I'm introduced to someone in a social setting, I'll be sure to be upfront with em. "I'm not here to make friends, I'm here to win."