I think people genuinely vary in their ability to manage personal relationships. I'm probably one of those you despise - I have over 1500 'friends' on Facebook. But they are all contacts I have made at varying levels of intimacy, whose lives I actually am interested to hear about as far as they tell me. (Of course probably a quarter or a third of them never actually post anything anyway.) Some people simply are genuinely "super-connectors"; I wrote about this a few months back. (You will certainly recognise person a, even before you get to his comment at the bottom of the page.)

Ferrazzi is not as clever as he thinks he is (and I can save you the trouble of buying his book - just read my review). But I found the biggest irony was that in the end he actually exhorts people to at least pretend to be nice even if their hearts aren't in it, out of self-interest. I know too many people who feel constrained to be nasty to everyone, deserved or not, and I know my life is made easier by people being nice to me even if it is not completely sincere.