"It's just like living in a village, where it's actually hard to lie because everybody knows the truth already,"

but she hadn't "unfriended" him, because that felt too extreme.

It is the sort of weirdly subtle mind game that becomes possible via Facebook,

The rest are weak ties — maintained via technology.

"I outsource my entire life," she said. "I can solve any problem on Twitter in six minutes." (She also keeps a secondary Twitter account that is private and only for a much smaller circle of close friends and family — "My little secret," she said. It is a strategy many people told me they used: one account for their weak ties, one for their deeper relationships.)

ven the daily catalogue of sandwiches became oddly mesmerizing

For many people — particularly anyone over the age of 30 — the idea of describing your blow-by-blow activities in such detail is absurd. Why would you subject your friends to your daily minutiae?