Paris Hilton is not your friend

What happens to members of elite travel-networking site ASmallWorld.net that break the strict rules of conduct? Those, for example, who after gaining much sought-after membership simply can't restrain themselves from sending a wishful friend request to the site's celebrity contingency, such as Paris Hilton or Naomi Campbell?

Immediate expulsion followed by profile deletion was the worst I imagined. But no, it's much more humiliating than that.

ASW wrong-doers get relegated to a purgatory otherwise know as A Big World. Next time they log in, they find the normally blue welcome screen has turned a shameful green, access to the forums and other profiles is denied, and all they can read are the "what did I do wrong?" lamentations from other ejectees.

An old article from Wired details an anecdote from one reluctant Big World member: a 20-something from Geneva called Talal bin Laden, who admits he's "distantly, distantly related to that guy no one likes".

"One guy posted some anti-Arab racist slurs, and I responded with a polite deconstruction of why I felt that was inappropriate," says bin Laden. "For that, I was evicted to hell."