Whoever said that you can't buy "friends" didn't know about the shallow shortcuts of our internet age. An article in Hemispheres magazine explored a number of sites that are dedicated to helping you find online "friends." These companies will create fake users or pay real account holders to follow and like you on various social media sites.

For instance, on the site Socialyup.com you can buy 500 likes for $30 or 20,000 likes for $699. For a mere $10, FanMeNow will find you 1,000 Twitter followers and for $1,750 you can buy a million followers. If you need to beef up views for your YouTube video, for $150 you can buy 30,000 views from a site called 500views.com. For $3,100 they'll make your video go "viral" by getting you a million views.

The article concludes with the following advice: "No matter what social network you're on, you can buy your way to popularity."

Possible Preaching Angles: Of course we can't "buy" real friends so use this illustration to focus on (1) Friends, Friendship, Community, Small Groups--by showing the the need for true friendships that can only be found in authentic community. Also use it to to highlight small groups. (2) Leaders, Leadership--Effective leaders have real followers, not fake followers that they have to purchase.