Too Many Friends

Brian Molko explains in an interview: "Too Many Friends is based on real events. One day I was at my computer – and I don’t know what I typed into Google… what dodgy porn I was watching… and all of sudden my computer started advertising to me. Like, you know, I was a gay man into the fetish thing. And I remember saying to myself, ‘My computer thinks I’m gay today’ – what a ridiculous line to start a song (laughs). Around the same time, some friends of mine who use social media, and I should say that I don’t myself because I have enough trouble keeping up with my real friends, said they had to stop taking friend requests because they had too many friends. I started thinking ‘How can we ever have too many friends? Then I wondered how many ‘real’ friends do I actually have and how is the virtual world humans are creating affecting the way we interact with each other? Is it creating a new society founded on togetherness or is it simply creating a new form of social alienation? I think it’s very dangerous. People don’t have to communicate face to face anymore – you can do it from behind a screen. You no longer have to have the courage of your convictions – you don’t have to justify what you feel and what you really mean. The virtual world creates an amazing platform for the spineless. It’s both a fascinating and dangerous proposition to consider."

The song may be about some abstract person, or Brian himself. He is sick of this modern social networks thing and having lots of online friends that he will never meet and such "friendships" being meaningless compared to the real thing. But the real thing lost it meaning too, since people prefer to stare into their phones instead of communicating in real life. With such people around him and useless virtual friends, he feels lonely ("The applications are to blame For all my sorrow and my pain And feeling so alone")

Seems more likely to me that Brian is singing about himself, this way "my computer thinks I'm gay" fits in, since he surely reads such opinions about himself online. Also, a rock star is more likely to have a home near Champs-Elysees than just some abstract guy :)

I just love the following line: 'If I could give it all away, would it come back to me someday?' I think the protagonist is very courageous in getting rid of all that social media that defines his life 'my computer thinks I'm gay'. This song is clearly criticizing all those 'friends' or followers you have on social media that you'll probably never meet in person.

While it's great to spread your ideas and find likeminded people, at one point in your life, especially if you're famous, it can become overwhelming. The protagonist is sad or better feels sorry for all those people he can never be there for although he knows how much they'd love a minute of his time. But he can't. And then, there are all those applications (apps), he's talking about, that he blames his sorrow on because they made his dilemma possible. The line 'When all the people do all day It staring into a phone' is the strongest and clearest line to see him criticizing the new era of smartphones and how people live more in virtual reality than in their normal life.