"While boasting, he says - My network is very large. Most of my contacts, however, are now dead-links!"
Have you ever checked your contact list. How many are live presently? Never checked or no idea! Yeah, we fall in some undecided kind of love with them. Although they are useless but still we never delete them. So caution before boasting about your contacts in front of anyone. Many of them are now converted in does not exist. Open and cross check if you don't want to be laughing stock for them.