Damn! It's been quite a month of controversy on MySpace.

In case you haven't logged onto MySpace in about six weeks, there've been a few major scandals going on. There was the Kendal scandal, the Frey scandal and the worst of them all (in my opinion) the "Pray for Todd" scandal. (Please don't make me elaborate on the details... ask in the comments if you need more info.)

Meanwhile, I was aware of a number of "lower-to-zero" profile mini-scandals, mostly involving MySpace romances where one party was spinning a line of total (ahem) "fantasy" to the other.

Which has led me to wonder about the reality of MySpace and the purpose/nature of MySpace friendships (and *shudder* MySpace "romances").

Now you can certainly have "net-friends" - I've got a large number of them. These are people I exchange the odd email with, and I have a rough awareness of their life and circumstance. They often read my blogs or I read theirs. If the opportunity ever arose I'd love to meet these people.

I don't allow myself to regard these people as "real" friends, however. The dividing line for me between a "net-friend" and a "real friend" is VERIFIABILITY. All of the scandals (major and minor) that I've seen unfold recently involved a failure to verify before getting emotionally attached.

So let me establish some basic ground rules for living in the virtual MySpace world.

Manning's First Law of MySpace: Do not get emotionally involved with someone you've never met. Curiosity is OK (but subject to the second law).
Manning's Second Law of MySpace: Do not even become curious about someone who's existence you can't verify.

How do you verify someone on MySpace? Photos are a good place to start. If there is a photo of a person with someone you actually know, then you are on very solid ground. If you can see an image of someone you're curious about with someone else that you can contact independently, there's a fair chance that is still a real person.

For example, I've never met the MySpace blogger Wayno.

I've read his stuff, I've exchanged emails with him on a number of occasions, and I am aware that he is a mid-30's guy living in Boston. But regardless of having never met him, I'm 100% certain that Wayno is a real person and that what he is telling me is the truth. This is because I've met Wayno's real-life girlfriend (and MySpace Blogger Queen) Stephanie.

Following on, I know that Stephanie and Damn Girl correspond regularly but have never met. However I can link the two of them together via photos, and hence I can vouch that they are both very "real".

More examples - the well-known bloggers Laura (Casteroni) and Paul (Devil's Advocate) also exchange emails regularly, and I can connect them too:

I could go on... I've regularly corresponded with, but have never met Jenna. However I have met Daniel (Rosjian) and he has met Jenna, so I now regard Jenna as a real (and 'verified') person. I can name plenty more, but you get the idea.

The bottom line is, if you can find a way to verify people, all the better. If you are starting to become emotionally attached to someone (especially if that attachment is romantic in nature), then it is mandatory.

Verification is also great when you hear things that should raise suspicion. In the Todd/Chad  case, Chad allegedly had a private jet that he was flying around the country on. If that sort of stuff doesn't raise alarm bells, well it should.

Likewise, if some random guy tells you he's just landed a three-month role in a major television series, I'd be really skeptical... unless of course the guy happens to be the Devil's Advocate, because I can then vouch that it is true.

As you can see, verification is a useful thing.

It's not always going to be possible - I've got a MySpace friend in Finland (Miss Mirelle) who I enjoy corresponding with but don't see any way of getting to know in person any time soon. I've spoken on the phone with SuperJabs but missed out on meeting him this time around. It doesn't mean that I don't trust these people as such, but I maintain a certain sense of detachment from them that I don't have with the I know or can verify. (And if I put any effort into it, I could probably find a mutual contact and verify Jabs fairly quickly).

But the Kendal and Todd situations arose because a lot of people got attached to someone where this verification never happened, and they got burned. In the Todd situation, a lot of genuine, caring people had their natural empathy and kindness exploited by a manipulative hoaxer, and those people did NOT deserve that.

So to cut it all short - Keep it Real, people. As best you can.

The Kevin Bacon Element. While in Sacramento, it was pointed out to me that with all of these meetings and photos I am becoming the "Kevin Bacon" of MySpace - in other words I can connect large groups of people on MySpace to each other. If you aren't familiar with this subject, there is a theory that every actor in the world can be connected eventually to actor Kevin Bacon.

Adapting this idea, we find that anyone who has met me in person has a "Manning Number" of 1 (M1), and anyone who has met someone who has met me has a "Manning Number" of 2 (M2), and so on. Anyone in a photo with me gets this changed to "MP1", and anyone in a photo with someone who has "MP1" gets "MP2", etc.

After scanning my friends list, I concluded that I have 140+ MySpace friends that I have met in person, so they all have M1 status. I'm not sure how many people I've been photographed with, but I'm guessing more than that (allowing group shots) and they all get an MP1.

So if you are prepared to accept the fact that I am real, then anyone who has met me can also be trusted to be real (to at least a degree), and any photo you see of a person with an MP number can be trusted as well.

Questions
How best to go about validating someone's existence?
When do you need to?
Who's got an M or MP number?
What's the highest MP number out there?
Has anyone got a photo from my trip that I don't know about?

PS - I recently modified my Top Friends to only include people I knew in real life. A number of folks got miffed at that, but it was nothing personal and I'm sorry if anyone got offended :)