The Thing I will Talk about for a while (Part 1): The Facebook Phenomenon

I'm sitting in the third row of the computer lab. Without turning my head, I can see four people scrolling through facebook photos. There are only four people in front of me. Why do we want to look at pictures of the people we know when there are pictures of much more exotic things (like smoking chimps and alligator eating snakes) on the wonderful intronet? I think the reason is that the pictures of people we know are more interesting because they are closer to something that is real (Real?). Could this also be why we are so attracted to "based on a true story" stories (actually, I am repulsed by them, but ya know)?