Do I have any friends?
No, I don’t mean this in some pathetic “Nobody loves me, I’m going to eat some worms” sort of way. I know that some people like me, that some people don’t, and that the overwhelming sentient biomass of the planet would rather pluck a penny from a turd than care.
But, if you were to ask me, “Do you have many friends?” I’d reply, “Nope. I don’t have any. Well, maybe one, but I only see him every five years.” Since I know there are people who will read this and think that I’m saying I don’t care about them, let me explain. It seems to me that a person with friends arranges to spend time with them. Maybe they go to the movies or have dinner together and then play Jenga. But I don’t do that, and nobody does it to me. Therefore, I have no friends.
And yet I know my saying “I have no friends” has to be false since I’m not the lonely, isolated human being that that implies. I actually am pretty social (in my own retarded way), do the manly bear hug thing with plenty of people, and get scarily happy when I run into people I know. My definition of friendship as a type of appointment-based relationship has to be wrong. So, how should I now broaden my definition?
In the proper Socratic tradition, I find myself looking at relationships that I’m sure go into the bucket marked “friends” to see what they have in common. And I notice two broad sets of characteristics.
First, friends are not just happy to see each other, although that’s probably the right operative definition. More important, the better the friendship, the more the friends relax the rules that are supposed to guide behavior: If I’m you’re friend, you don’t have to ask permission before you take off your shoes and if your feet stink, I don’t exercise my right to insist that you re-shoe yourself. Principles are what we resort to when relationships are weak. Acceptance and forgiveness based on delight…that’s what I see in common among the relationships in my “friends” bucket.
Second, as I look at what my friends think friendship is, I see a significant divergence…a range that maps exactly to the divergence in their personalities and virtues. And because friendship has something to do with acceptance, we don’t have to agree on what friendship means. Aren’t friendships more often asymmetrical in this way than not? I don’t mean asymmetrical in intensity, but in their very idea of what constitutes friendship. I may well be your friend for different reasons than you’re my friend, and that’s just fine. And we’re friends with different people for different reasons.
These are reasons why artificial social networks such as Friendster will only work insofar as the participants transcend the structures of the network itself. That structure - which the social networks think is their value - is in fact an obstacle that only friendship can overcome.
In conclusion, I guess I have to admit that, since I am delighted by more people than I can count, including some who actively dislike me, maybe I do have friends, even though nobody calls me up and says, “Hey, I have an extra ticket to the Celtics. Wanna come and we’ll grab a beer afterwards?” I mean, I hate sports and besides I’d rather be with my wife and kids than with you, and there’s something good on TV that night anyway. But would it kill you to ask?
1. fp on July 7, 2004 11:39 PM writes...
When I was younger I was pretty clueless about a lot more than I'm clueless about today (although an argument regarding the equivalence of infinite sets can be made). Anyway, I wasn't given to paying good money for new shoes in those days if the old ones hadn't rotted off my feet yet. I was visiting some friends in Sunnyvale, the Sunnyvale of new tract homes and large vacant spaces that would someday be more new tract homes, the Sunnyvale of Lockheed, NASA Ames Research Center, and the Blue Cube... not much more. So this was one of those hang out and talk smart evenings and the mood of the moment was to remove shoes and relax. My feet smelled real bad. But then the shoes did too, so there wasn't really a good balance point. Not too many years later I was reminded of that evening in a small, close, aparmtment on Nob Hill. Different shoes, same condition. I guess what I'm saying is that word has probably gotten around by now and the reason nobody invites me to visit is because of those long ago days in the Bay Area when my foot odor was unforgivable. I have since changed my socks and purchased another pair of shoes. I hope some day to be forgiven.
Thank you for an insightful essay, David. Now that the feet are cleaned up I'm saving for a personality transplant. Know any willing donors?
Permalink to Comment2. David Weinberger on July 7, 2004 11:56 PM writes...
Frank, you can stink up my living room any time you want.
Permalink to Comment3. Phil Gyford on July 8, 2004 10:39 AM writes...
I wonder if the nature of what we call a "friend" has drifted over the past decade? On one level I now feel I have more friends than I can satisfactorily keep in touch with -- I'm in daily contact with at least one order of magnitude more people than I was 10 years ago and I'm forever thinking "I really owe xxx an email". But on another level I don't feel like I've really connected with many of those many people, and most (but not all) of my really close friends are people I know more from the real world. Even though I'm in far less regular touch with them.
Maybe it's the difference between many weak ties and a few strong ties? But there's something aside from frequency-of-contact that indicates the strength of friendship (in my experience, anyway). Shared visceral experiences? Face-to-face conversations?
Permalink to Comment4. Christopher Allen on July 8, 2004 1:43 PM writes...
If you just add a single qualifier in front of the word "friend", it makes a big difference. A "business friend" is very different then a "close friend". A business friend is someone who you know professionally, but have a more the just a business relationship with. For instance, you chat about far more then just business issues, you spend time together in various non-business ways, and you buy each other beers. But you are not "close friends".
There doesn't seem to be another word for this relationship -- "collegue" comes close, but doesn't quite fit.
I agree that in the category of "close friends" I have very few. Of "best friends" I have only a couple.
Permalink to Comment5. Nancy White on July 8, 2004 7:37 PM writes...
Hey David, I'm in Boston. Wanna have a beer?
Permalink to Comment6. Jacob Shwirtz on July 9, 2004 6:21 AM writes...
To me a friend is someone whom I'd be more-than-a-little sad if he or she died AND they'd be more-than-sad-a-little sad if I died. This includes people I've never met in real life, people I haven't seen in years and people I only see every few years.
PLUG - I just wrote a long entry on my blog pondering what happens to your "online self" when you die. It's here.
Permalink to Comment7. David Weinberger on July 9, 2004 8:52 AM writes...
Nancy, what about the Jenga? Bzzzt! You've failed my Friendship Test. Too bad since I actually like you. But I have my standards. I'm sure you understand.
Permalink to Comment8. Michiel on July 12, 2004 9:23 AM writes...
I believe this subject's title could be considered wrong. Redefining friendship is not really the subject is it?
The punch-line is about artificial social networks and that's also a bit where I disagree.
To me, a friend is also someone that provides unasked advice in the best interest of the one receiving it. That IS an element of virtual social networks that can work and probably does too, oftentimes.
Permalink to Comment9. Chuck Lawson on July 22, 2004 11:43 AM writes...
I think that the nature of these relationships is changing a lot. Fifteen, twenty years ago, to be in communication with someone who had a significant overlap of interests was a pretty rare thing -- at least for those of us with the more geeky, rarified interests. To be in significant contact with this person also tended to mean that they were local, and you tended to spend time, and learn or acquire other mutual interests and experiences.
Today, no matter how narrow the interest, odds are there's a substantial amount of it online, and you can have contact and share information very casually -- in many cases, without any real "sharing"; read what you want, move on, and you're nothing more than an entry or two in a log file. As a result, the value of this kind of contact to generate a "relationship" has declined a lot.
I think this may be one of the real reasons why so many of us seem to have fewer "friends" in at least this one sense than we did before. "Friendship" now requires more ties to things in common that can't be easily shared online.
Permalink to Comment10. Dan Brickley on July 24, 2004 5:02 AM writes...
Nice piece, bookmarked for the next time someone tells me to include more detailed 'friendship taxonomy' details within the FOAF core. Another lesson from both this article, YASNs and FOAF I think is that anyone who sets out to explicitly describe the details of their friendships also risks changing them (old news to sociologists...).
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