strangers or friends

This week's edition of Der Spiegel has a cover story on how social networking changes life in general, the new aspects of friendship, privacy, public life, etc.:



The headline Fremde Freunde is absolutely untranslatable, unless you slot in an "or" or something similar: strangers/friends, unfamiliar friends ...

The article is kind of interesting as an overview, although tinged with a vague lack of understanding, and spiced with the usual offering of horror stories. I mean you can find mindless idiots in your local pub, and you can get murdered by somebody who first contacted you by telephone or by knocking on your door, so I don't quite see why the appearance of social networking sites in the context of crimes or other problems is supposed to mean they are a bad thing. They are just the way people communicate in this day and age, so they come with all the good and bad things that communication between people can lead to. (And I have a higher spam rate in the phone calls I receive than in the MySpace messages.)

Well, at least I am quite happy with the whole Web2.0 thing, strange friends and friendly strangers included ...