There are a few rules I live by. Among these, the publishable ones are:

1. Never give money to homeless people because they don’t go and spend it on a cool watch at the Paul Frank store as I instruct them to.
2. Never trust women wearing hats (what are they hiding under there?)
3. The possibilities of injury from products sold by Tony Little on the home shopping network are, from time to time, understated.
4. Pineapple salsa is only acceptable to serve at a party that is >90% Caucasian. Similarly, serving it at a party that is >10% Mexican will result in a situation.
5. Never date a girl who has more than 300 Facebook friends.

It is this last rule that I would like to discuss in detail here, but I think it applies to both men & women of any orientation and those like Andy Dick who are still figuring it out. The point is, an effective way to filter out potential romantic interests is by eliminating those with more than 300 Facebook friends. Anyone with more than that is probably problematic. I don’t know what it is, but I’m telling you this is a good rule to live by, and one you must instill in your children.

If someone has more than 300 people to follow, how are they going to have time to pay attention to you? Are you really more interesting than 300 other people? Are you more attractive? Not if I’m friends with them, you’re not. Do you really want to represent at most .3% of the people they know? That’s one-third of one percent for you MBAs out there. The thing is, most normal people don’t actually have 300 friends because that would make them pretty popular and by definition, most people are not popular. See how that works? Someone having this many friends diminishes your potential significance to them and should be, like a girl you casually know telling you she cheated on her last partner with her parachuting instructor, a deal killer. Think of it like stock- the market frowns on companies that dilute their shares by issuing more. The fewer shares, the more valuable each share is and the larger percentage of the company it represents. Have some value.

This idea is similar to a theory discussed in “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell (I’m not going to bother citing it like I should so save it). You probably got it one Christmas from your uncle who handed it to you, tapped it on the top and said “there’s some good ideas in there.” In it, Gladwell discusses a theory that humans can only effectively socialize with 150 other individuals, due to the ratio of the neocortex to the rest of the brain (a similar formula can also be applied to other primates). He backs up this theory citing research by a British anthropologist named Robin Dunbar of hunter gatherer societies which reveals a similar threshold of approximately 150 individuals per village before a group splits and a new one is created. On side note, if I lived in a village, my status updates on Facebook would be things like “David is churning more butter”, “David needs more thatch for ye olde roof” or “David bargained well today with both the fishmonger and the haberdasher. Yea, he shall have salted meat and warm clothing all winter long.”

What it comes down to is that it seems humans are wired such that they can only really have meaningful relationships with 150 individuals. This is well below my 300 person cutoff because the dynamic of a village is different than the rules that apply to Facebook and some space should be allowed for the selective inclusion of professional contacts, fans (you wouldn’t understand) or other people you end up accepting requests from, but are not really friends with like witches. When someone has more than 300 Facebook friends, they are basically eschewing anthropological research which does not sit well with me, and indicates that they desire to have many trivial friendships. Perhaps you will end up as one of them while they will perhaps end up in Congress. This is no recipe for a successful lifelong partnership.

But then again, I’d also never tell you to date someone with less than 30 friends cause that’s just sad. So, if we’re not friends on Facebook already, hurry up and add me cause I’m stuck at 210 and really need more validation than that.