Taking Facebook and Twitter to Task

Making friends the old-fashioned way isn’t so easy anymore. That is, unless you’re Maria Scileppi.When the extroverted artist returned to Chicago after a six-year stint in New York City she realized that she basically had no local friends. She rectified that problem by vowing to make a new friend everyday for an entire year. The experiment worked and the fruits of her camaraderie are on display this weekend in Chicago in an exhibition she titled “Peoplescape.” The show features photos and stories of each person she met between June 2007 and June 2008.“Friendship is being redefined because of the social media revolution," she told the Chicago Sun-Times. "People have now been living with Facebook, but the honeymoon's over. I think we're realizing the importance of face-to-face contact."Scileppi, 34, cast aside digital media in her friendship search and instead opted to create insta-friendships face-to-face, going out into the world and engaging people in conversation. Perhaps more amazingly, Scileppi says she keeps up with about 30 people she met during her experiment, including Jessimy Blasberg, who ended up co-producing the exhibit and has morphed into her new best friend.“There is a social need for something like this,” Schileppi told the Sun-Times. “It’s organic. It’s kind of taken on a life of its own, and it keeps going.”Take that, Facebook and Twitter.