How do you know me?

Spam email is one thing; I have no real problem with some nefarious networking netherworlder firing out random offers of mortgages, medication and man-enhancement. What winds me up is when my friends join in! Page-long jokes, surveys, petitions, quizzes, pictures, powerpoint shows, they drive me crazy, especially as most of the time they are forwarded on by a network of friends, family and relations that I've never even met. Now, being a very sociable kinda guy, a professional party-goer no less, it makes me sad to have all these names and no faces to match them to, so I formulated a plan. I started to take note of those who emailed me, to pay attention to those names unfamiliar to me and unfortunate enough to have been cc'd in, or forwarded on. I began to compile a list of addresses, scanning each email I received for additions, deleting those names I recognised, slowly building up a diary of connections between me and a line of half-baked friends and long lost acquaintances. I created my database, hunting and gathering, collecting and collating, honing and pruning, aiming to arrive at a total of one thousand electronic strangers. Once I reached this magic number I planned to host a soireé of my own, inviting all these people and calling it 'How do you know me?' Each guest would have to work out exactly who they knew who knew someone who knew someone who knew me. Prizes would be given for the most elaborate connection, awards dished out for the longest travellers, songs composed for the most bewildered! My plan was fool-proof! unstoppable! irrepressible! And then my computer died and wiped out the database. So I decided to not bother.