You start with two or three. Within days you have 20. A month passes, and now you have more than 300 “friends,” and you wonder, “What just happened and how will it all end?”

This is not the result of becoming friendlier than you were a month ago. This 24/7 cocktail party commenced once you joined the trendy social networking rage, Facebook, or email on steroids, less ephemeral than Twitter, and more generic, easier to access, and more hip in some circles than MySpace.

You are free to limit your number of friends, or “block” those once accepted if you tire of them. But those you reject, well, you may hurt their feelings and if they are local you might even find yourself ducking behind the produce island at your grocery store.

Your “friends” are merely those you directly chat with, your close-knit club, and an unfurling sheet of flypaper because everyone wants in. You are in essence hosting 300 out-of-town guests each sleeping on your coach. You don’t have to feed them. You do have to pay attention to their thoughts of the day, hour and even minute.

The biggest complaint with Facebook seems to be the inaneness of some comments. On top of the Facebook main page template you are asked, “What’s on your mind?” Most people tell the truth, which can be dull.

Do you really care if your friend from grade school who now lives in West Virginia, someone you haven’t seen since the Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter debates, comments, “I just finished my bologna sandwich?”

Another friend, perhaps your former roommate’s 15 year-old niece (Yikes: Boundary issue alert!) requests you become “a fan of Oreos,” one of Facebook’s numerous gimmicks.

Not a big fan of Oreo’s? No problem. Check out the Facebook quizzes, “What Lady Gaga song are you?” “How North Dakotan are you?”

Unknown troublemakers can hack into your Facebook page to “phish” for your friends. They steal your password, find out your friends’ email addresses, and email them under your name. That happened to West Seattle resident and tango instructor Loretta Turin, who now has 107 Facebook friends.

“All my Facebook friends thought they received an email message from me recently and when they opened it, it was a request for money from a scammer,” said Turin, who likes to keep her friends updated on her dance classes. Luckily, she responded to each immediately. “It was embarrassing to have to explain it was not me.”

“A co-worker requested that I ‘friend’ her,” said a lawyer in an area firm who asked to remain anonymous. “She commented that she was very hung over. If I know she has a case in court that day, I question her ability to be professional. It’s awkward. We see each other every day so I felt obligated to ‘friend’ her.”

Also irksome is that you can easily see your friend’s posted photos of their friends, a.k.a. your “friends of friends.” And they can see you. Your friend can “tag you,” on their shots, which means your name appears as a curser drags over your body in a photo of you. These images can circulate as fast as the latest Joe Biden blunder on YouTube.

“It’s like an addiction,” said Junction resident Matthew Darling, who had close to 400 friends until he stopped using Facebook cold turkey.

“I still want to check,” he said. “But no. I’m not going to do it. I became so obsessed by what peoples’ status changes were. And I waited around for people to comment on my remarks. But I wasn’t talking to real people. I wasn’t going out on a beautiful day and actually seeing my friends at the Junction and having coffee. It totally sucked all my energy.

“In winter it was fine,” Darling continued. “As soon as it got warm I wanted to experience life again. My Facebook friends would write comments like, ‘I’m a fan of sleeping.’ Well? So sleep and leave me the hell alone.”

Darling is experienced in the culinary field and works at the Chocolate Box on Pine Street just up from Pike Place Market. He said he might build a page for the business as a marketing tool.

Ama Ama Oyster Bar & Grill just south of the Junction has a robust page with 151 “fans.” (On certain business sites friends are called fans.)

“A majority of those people became fans because they like the restaurant,” said Rob Coburn, who co-owns Ama Ama with Paige Crandall. “I don’t know most of them.”

Ama Ama updates its Facebook fan page weekly. The page also links to its Web site. A fan receives a comment on his Facebook page from the restaurant on, say, menu specials, the same as he would a friend’s comment.

Also, thousands who are not fans may see an Ama Ama ad on their Facebook page.

“I can target the ads,” Coburn said. “I can pick an age group and specific area for my advertising. I pay for the ad by the amount of impressions, or views our ad gets, and for ‘click-throughs,’ when people actually click the ad and see our webpage. Facebook really helped us on Valentines Day and Mothers Day.”

Business aside, Coburn shares some of Darling’s issues with his private Facebook page.

“From a personal standpoint, I’ve cut back on how many friends I have,” he said. “People doing those two word and two sentence messages every 20 minutes, after a while you start not wanting to seeing those. I have 170 friends, a majority in Europe, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and all over the country because I used to travel a lot, which is great. But it does get a little much with friends here who post four or five updates a day.”