
Ask HN: Is anyone else losing friends in droves? - lonelysf
Hopefully not directly from the pandemic.<p>During the Facebook debacle last week, a fair number of my friends have publicly supported interests that seem directly opposed to my safety.<p>Is anyone else experiencing pressure to defend their values harder than ever, to the point of conversation deadlock?<p>It used to be a lot easier to maintain a diverse group of friends, so I&#x27;m curious about any of your experiences through times like these.<p>How do you stay creative, balanced, cope with lots of change, ...<p>thank you.
======
rayiner
Don’t buy into the notion that speech and beliefs are an attack on your
“safety.” That’s just a tactic to elevate a certain class of political beliefs
above the usual debate. It’s a poisonous notion.

Of course, ideas that lead to policy matter in the aggregate. But I don’t
think it’s productive to “lose friends” because their policy preferences, if
adopted, through some long and attenuated causal chain might be contrary to
your personal interests. Over the last year, I’ve become deeply concerned
about the ideas espoused by many of my friends. I’m an immigrant to this
country and for the most part love it for what it is. I think many of the
notions my Facebook friends subscribe to will in the long term change the
country for the worse, and lead to a worse future for my children. Indeed, it
wouldn’t be historically unprecedented for these ideas, if taken too far, to
lead to real suffering and physical harm to many people. But I know these
people and I’m convinced they hold all of their beliefs in good faith. I’m not
going to hold it against them that I think that the policies they support may
be wrong or even harmful in the long run.

~~~
pieterk
Your response was very healing, thank you. I do believe that every man is
acting in their world's best interest, too.

The sun will rise again tomorrow.

------
downerending
Things have definitely changed. Twenty years ago, I had friends with a _wide_
variety of opinions, and it generally seemed possible to disagree without it
being a problem.

These days, generally only the people to my "right" seem like this. It's rare
to be able to talk long with someone to my "left" without them becoming
offended. That seems particularly unusual, as I've been pretty far to the left
my entire life.

It's tempting to look at the 2016 election as the cause, but I started really
noticing this about a year before that.

~~~
D13Fd
I honestly think part of it is foreign state influence on social media,
through literal fake news (not "they're biased," but "we faked a publication
with fake events that never happened"), memes, and targeted manipulation
designed to inflame divisions.

We're literally under attack, and these divisions are the result. For example,
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence -- while controlled by Republicans
-- concluded that driving factions of the U.S. ideologically apart is a chief
aim of Russia's social media efforts. See pages 20-22 of Volume 2 of the 2019
Report on Russian Active Measures Campaigns:

[https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...](https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume2.pdf)

Specifically, the Republican Senate concluded that Russia's aim is to erode
trust in the media, drive polarization, feed information that drives support
for all political extremes (far-left, far-right, and other), and "exploit
societal divisions that already exist, rather than attempt to create new
ruptures." They also want to "bait[] governments to respond in a heavy-handed
or improper fashion that is irreconcilable with the nation's principles and
civil liberties."

It's working.

~~~
downerending
I think there's something to this, but perhaps a bit more complex. A lot of
the "fake news" I see is coming straight from NYT and WaPo, so not directly
due to "bots" or whatever. But certainly it's plausible that a foreign entity
could be indirectly plotting to destroy the credibility of those papers, as a
general morale destroyer. Watching our papers of record debase themselves is
an awful sight.

The broad "bot" concept could be in play, but people are so cheap that I
suspect it's funded humans instead. There does seem to be something amplifying
our tendencies towards polarization.

Thirty years ago, if someone had a wacky set of ideas, people would point and
laugh. These days, they're relatively more likely to clubbed into submission,
forced into a struggle session, or just cancelled completely.

~~~
D13Fd
I actually didn't even mention bots, although social media bots are part of it
(in terms of posting things). I think it's mostly real people working for
Russia and China, stirring up other people who are not. Social media is a huge
echo chamber.

As far as NYT and WaPo, they are not "fake news" in the sense I was talking
about. Nor is Fox, Breitbart, OANN etc. I'm talking about sites that are set
up for people to imitate news organizations and spread made up but super
polarizing content, often about race, religion, abortion, guns, immigration --
anything that divides people. That content then pings around on social media
and helps amps up the polarization to incredible levels.

~~~
downerending
> I'm talking about sites that are set up for people to imitate news
> organizations and spread made up but super polarizing content, often about
> race, religion, abortion, guns, immigration -- anything that divides people.

That pretty much describes journalism these days.

~~~
pieterk
divide and conquer.

------
scottlocklin
Sounds like you are caught up in some horrific FB dopamine loop[1]. You really
don't need to engage with people on the internet; it's totally optional, and
not particularly "social." You especially don't need to engage with people on
that toxic shit-hole which is designed to make you unhappy. You can either
remove the app from your ipotato, or quit. I occasionally hear about
shenanigans on FB from my actual friends. None of it makes any sense.

[1] [https://www.wired.com/story/phone-addiction-
formula/](https://www.wired.com/story/phone-addiction-formula/)

~~~
hashkb
This is a great answer that's totally orthogonal to the issue at hand, so I
love it. No matter how you read OP, staying out of internet arguments is a
good way to preserve friendships, if that's your goal. I'm going to hit
"reply" now....

------
jkhdigital
Keep mouth closed, ears open. Repeat serenity prayer:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to
change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.

Regarding the wisdom, I generally start with a null hypothesis that anything I
can physically do with my body (which includes words produced by my mouth or
my fingertips) is in the latter category, and everything else is in the former
until I have overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

But anyways, I can relate a little. My sister has never been an activist type,
never said anything about racial justice, until a week ago when she started
posting BLM content on Facebook with a demand that anyone who disagrees should
go ahead and unfriend her now. It was a shockingly abrupt change.

~~~
znpy
> But anyways, I can relate a little. My sister has never been an activist
> type, never said anything about racial justice, until a week ago when she
> started posting BLM content on Facebook with a demand that anyone who
> disagrees should go ahead and unfriend her now. It was a shockingly abrupt
> change.

Count me in. And I'm not even in the US.

The thing is, the currently unfolding events are about Black Lives and the
systemic discrimination and criminalization of black people in the US. But are
about democracy too, and by a lot. And this is important considering how much
influent the USA are on other nations.

Over the last two weeks we started seeing the US military (police corps and
national guards) open fire agains its own military, repressing dissent and
targeting journalists specifically. We have seen racial discrimination in
clear sight, police brutality and police representatives unable to admit fault
even with footage. We've seen cops planting bricks to charge protestors. We've
seen police telling white dudes armed but not protesting to stay inside so
that it doesn't look like they're playing favourites.

We've seen the police shoot the medics: that's war crime, for christ's sake.

As an italian, this reminds me A FUCKING LOT of the history pages about the
rising of fascism in Italy.

I genuinely believe that the USA are becoming a fascist country, and that the
outcome of these protests and the election in november will definitively
declare what kind of nation the USA are.

I'm not asking people to unfriend me because I'm not on facebook. But I feel a
lot more the need to do something instead of the usual nothing about world
politics.

TL;DR: the current events are crazier than have ever been, and immensely
scary.

~~~
archagon
The rise of the far right, and the ambivalence of so many people in my
community towards this rise, leaves me in a permanent state of anger/despair.
There's many more lines in the sand for me now, and much less charity towards
my fellow man. I'm glad that I have close friends and family with whom I can
have more nuanced discussions, since there's a baseline of trust and empathy
in those relationships — but I'm not sure what I would do if they suddenly
started spouting Fox News bulletpoints. It all sucks.

~~~
pieterk
Yes, it's the copycat behavior that unnerves me.

I'm constantly censuring myself already, and only speak when I know what I'm
talking about. Someone said talk is cheap but that's not true for everybody.

Words might be cheap, but getting them out...that's expensive if you happen to
be an introvert.

------
_bxg1
My interpretation of the above is that you have friends who support
dismantling or at least re-building the police as an institution, and that you
see this as a threat to your safety and you're getting into conflict over the
matter. With that assumption, I would say:

a) Take a step back and ask yourself how much your safety is really being
threatened by others' opinions on these matters. Also, as an exercise,
consider the degree of un-safety that millions have been experiencing for many
years which resulted in the current conflict. Even if you don't agree with
your friends' conclusions, I'd bet you can at least sympathize with the root
of the issue.

b) Relationships are maintained through tolerance. I maintain a good
relationship with my parents despite having a polar-opposite political
viewpoint, by putting what I know of them as people ahead of the words of
their professed, abstract ideology. The two are not the same thing. Leaving
some wiggle-room there is key to reducing conflict, which is key to
maintaining lasting relationships. You have to be able to agree to disagree
sometimes.

~~~
stonogo
My interpretation was that the OP has friends who oppose increased
accountability or demilitarizion of the police, and that they saw this as a
threat to safety. How would that interpretation modify your answers?

~~~
_bxg1
It would depend on where the friends' views are rooted.

If the friend is saying "My uncle is a cop who's never done anything wrong and
he doesn't deserve to be lumped in with the ones causing trouble", I could
actively sympathize with that.

If the friend is saying "I still think it's only a few bad cops and that the
protesters are causing more trouble overall than the cops", I would tend to
think that person was misinformed and maybe try to share new information with
them if I thought it would make a difference, but I would also leave it be if
I had to for the sake of the friendship (this is my situation with my
parents).

If the friend is saying "Strong-man governments are great, people should bow
down and stop trying to hold the police accountable, they shouldn't have to be
accountable to anybody", then that would tell me something about the person's
moral center and I don't see myself wanting to remain friends with that kind
of person at all.

------
loopz
Treat online discussions as online, even among friends. You're never going to
win anybody over, get over yourself. In real-life, you might be able to at
least make a persuasive argument based on facts and supporting evidence, or
even just charm. Online dialogue is just not suited to true understanding and
hearing eachother out, but rather the opposite. Just observe the wild
conspiracy theories that in normal discourse would never otherwise be allowed
such prominence, if not for social media platforms and covert ad campaigns.

------
ojhughes
In the UK we often use the derrogative term "snowflake" to describe people who
are usually left leaning & perpetually offended. Judging by Twitter, there are
a new generation of snowflakes who are even more offended and angry, they melt
away at the first sniff of conflicting opinion.

Whilst I dislike the term, I think life is too short to spend time with people
who take themselves and their opinions too seriously. I want spend more time
laughing and less time debating.

------
jptoor
1\. If a BLM post is all it took to "lose a friend," I'd reconsider your
definition.

2\. Not everything is about you. Your friends explicitly were not thinking
about you when they picked a side.

3\. You won't be convinced, but someone else may benefit from a tool I've used
to get past this. Would you hold the same beliefs if you were born black in an
inner city? Would you want the status quo in terms of police strategies? To be
scared for your life at every traffic stop? It's easy to defend a stance from
a position of privilege (directly opposed to "my safety".)

You can do the same for your friends with different political beliefs - most
stances are based on someone's life experiences or environment. There's likely
a reason they believe something, and it has nothing to do with you. If you
grew up in their situation, or friends, or life experiences, do you think
you'd still hold your same beliefs? Most of the time the answer for me is no,
and therefore the beliefs have nothing to do with the person's character.

~~~
pieterk
Of course would a facebook post not change OP's mind. Other cultures can also
have different definitions of friendship. They might even call American
friends, flakes.

What is the definition of friend, if yours don't think of you when deciding to
reallocate a quarter billion dollars?

I think there are no sides to this conflict. The system is in conflict with
itself, and we're barely able to control it at this point.

------
thu2111
I've got some friends with whom I disagree politically and we even regularly
debate. In fact for one friend, our friendship has been maintained over the
long term by regularly meeting for dinner and drinks, and often we end up
having massive arguments about all kinds of topics.

Our secret is that we don't let it reduce our respect for one another, at the
end of the evening we're always shaking hands and agreeing to meet again next
week. It may also help that when we became friends we worked together, so we
forged a bond of mutual respect through our work.

I have another friend who is a real SJW snowflake type (he got hired by
Google, perhaps that explains it, he wasn't like that before). With him I
don't tend to debate politics much because he gets genuinely upset. But we've
also always come back and been friends again afterwards, and I've noticed he's
sometimes gone off and researched whatever I was saying for himself and has
questions. So obviously parts of it sunk in.

I think Facebook can be difficult because your default mental state is that
all those people are "friends" even if maybe you haven't seen them for a
while, or if your friendships have very different depths. The term friend is
very black and white. Most people only have a tiny number of really deep
friendships, often only one or two at most, I mean of the sort built on real
long term knowledge of each other and which can survive genuine disagreement
over divisive issues. You say "a fair number of my friends" which sounds like
many of them probably aren't deep friends. They're probably more like
friendships that were once deep, or who were party buddies, or who were former
colleagues that you got along with etc. For them you'd probably be surprised
to discover that if you started hanging out with them regularly for some
reason, they'd get over it and you'd be OK.

------
xtiansimon
> "defend their values"

I've been trying to listen to others more in tough times like these.

I'm struggling to articulate my _perceptions_ of events from my neighbors and
friends of color in NYC. I'm struggling to understand my opinion as just _one
perspective_ my family member in CA, who is in law enforcement, has put on me.

I'm not worried about losing friends, nor family member's love, because I've
been struggling to hear what they're saying and pushing them past what is
generally comfortable conversation, but not to the point of flipping their lid
(Oh, that doesn't move you? How about this! kinda stuff), or repeating my
stand on hypocrisies (once is enough).

Let me put it this way. Can you maintain 5k friends with one-on-one personal
interactions? No. Impossible. By the time you get to the end of that list,
someone will have been married and had two kids. How about 1k friends? 500?
50? Are we talking about fluffy posts about kittens on Twitter? or highly
divisive topics? Can you have meaningful and thoughtful interactions with 5
people which leave you both aggravated, exhausted, and heart broken? I can say
at this point you won't be worrying about the party you're missing with 50
friends, but thankful for the friends you do have.

------
millette
Not an FB user but yes, in the last couple of months. Or was it more
discovering what "friend" really means. Either way, I'm actually happier now.

------
orwin
I think this is a cultural thing. I have different view with my brother on
pretty much everything but we still manage to find time to take vacation
together. It makes pretty interesting evening after a slow, windless day. If
people are interested he is really far left, i'm not (or i'm much, much
further depending of your point of view).

I mostly don't care about my friends points of view. The only question you
should ask them is : why do you think that, and the only question you should
ask yourself is the same one. Unless you're really, really well informed, your
point of won't be that interesting anyway. Interesting enough to post it on
reddit or HN at most :)

If the conversation becomes to much for people feelings, take a tangent, talk
about interesting philosophical point. Bias analysis is great too (check your
own bias loudly to encourage people to do the same, it works). Do not hesitate
to point that an argument is poor, especially if it comfort your views.

------
anthonygd
FWIW - I periodically remind myself that everyone I know is deeply flawed and
is wrong to various extents on most topics. That includes myself.

Talk is cheap, so people say (passionately) things with virtually no thought.
Wait to see what people do and decide whether it's a _direct_ threat. If
there's a 7 step chain of causation that's threatening, then you should relax
and acknowledge you're probably wrong. The other part is you should make sure
your actions directly align with your values.

Don't be this guy: [https://xkcd.com/386/](https://xkcd.com/386/)

~~~
hashkb
Imagine technical debt, but on a societal scale. Haven't you had to fix some
code; or organizational process/workflow if you're not an engineer; where the
root cause was layers below the symptom?

~~~
jkhdigital
Except society isn’t even remotely comparable to a business process or
software module, and the notion of “root cause” is questionable at best when
you have a chaotic system with layer upon layer of feedback loops.

~~~
azhu
Society is comparable to a software module producing business process in that
it's humans working together. Agreed that in both contexts there is no such
thing as "root cause" at the American society level.

Regardless, my personal choice for one would be technology.

~~~
pieterk
Please, let's switch from facebook to in person interaction, without
technology. Does anyone really remember how facial expressions work anymore?

------
rdtwo
So your friends fractured into anti maskers and pro maskers?

Or anti protesters / protesters?

I’m Confused so many decisive issues to deal with

------
diN0bot
> "my friends have publicly supported interests that seem directly opposed to
> my safety"

someone who is comfortable harming a friend is not being a friend. if you've
told someone that they're harming you, and they won't change at the very least
for the simple reason that _you're friends_...

maybe they used to be good friends and things changed, or maybe these weren't
good friends to begin with. either way, now is a good time to make new
friends.

best of luck. it's tough, especially during lockdown when it's harder to
connect over shared interests in the real world, but it's very worthwhile.

in conclusion: real friends can have productive conflict that doesn't ignore
the core respect and concern each person has for the other's wellbeing. you
deserve real friends.

------
jacobush
I preemptively removed the FB app for now. I don’t know if this is a fruitful
strategy in the long run but I sleep better right now.

------
motohagiography
I tried to create a throwaway account using Tor to provide a sincere personal
view of this topic, with valuable experience and which also needed strong
anonymity as not to put specific people at risk, but the recatchpa rejects the
Tor connection.

That this seemed necessary at all is itself sufficient to describe where we
are.

~~~
sdinsn
> That this seemed necessary

It is not necessary. Please don't exaggerate.

~~~
sethammons
I agree with the GP: it does not matter which side of a topic you are on,
which ever side it is, it could come back an bite you professionally. It is
wisest to either be anonymous or not engage.

------
non-entity
Not really, I havent had any friends for years, but I've witnessed family go
from relatively mild to full blown conspiracy-theorists within the past year,
which is pretty alarming.

~~~
verdverm
Conspiracy theories flourish when people are disillusioned with the leaders /
govt. I know many others struggling with this, I know it must be difficult.

Go get researched up on the psychology behind it, there are some good posts
here with links, and good stuff from couple years back. You won't be able to
change their minds with logic or facts

------
asgasdarrrr
Are you sure these are friends, or just aquaintances? If you do consider them
friends, why do you feel you must lose them due to their personal beliefs?

~~~
pieterk
Let's consider them to be friends for the argument in this discussion. And
also, that I'm sensitive and unforgiving when it comes to trust.

If now someone coughs in my face, without a mask, which has happened. not sure
if I should write them in my will. Because they may not have my security in
their best interest.

------
catacombs
> During the Facebook debacle last week, a fair number of my friends have
> publicly supported interests that seem directly opposed to my safety.

Can you elaborate?

------
Overtonwindow
Stand by your principles and beliefs. If they were really your friends they
would respect you for it. Maybe it’s time to find new friends.

------
seibelj
> _a fair number of my friends have publicly supported interests that seem
> directly opposed to my safety_

I can't understand what you are hinting at here, or why it's related to FB.
Maybe I'm out of the loop.

But in my experience, the majority of people don't religiously post on social
media and have moderate views on most things. So extreme people on all sides
are not representative of most people.

~~~
_bxg1
My interpretation of the above is that the OP has friends who support
dismantling or at least re-building the police as an institution, and the OP
sees this as a threat to his or her safety and is getting into conflict over
the matter. FB recently received a lot of backlash from employees and others
over deciding not to hide posts from the president suggesting imminent
military violence against protesters.

------
tracker1
I've lost two friends in the past month or so... one very leftist, one very
right leaning. I tend to be more libertarian, but pragmatic.

People tend to be tribalist in nature, you tend to lean into a group and
that/those groups become your identity instead of striving to take things as
an individual and respecting people as individuals.

We are all allowed to have our own opinions and perspective, and even discuss
and debate their value vigorously. Where we tend to falter is when we lose
respect for the people who are expressing opinions that we disagree with.

It's generally a combination of pedantry, anger, ignorance and disrespect for
ourselves and others that leads to action in those baser instincts and reject
"the other." In the end, we are worse off for it. It often feels like general
discourse has been set back over a century in the past decade alone.

I try to concentrate on admirable personality traits in terms of those I would
deem to support vs not about on level with policy opinions. Arrogance,
corruption and hypocrisy are the big ones for me, short of that I'm willing to
put up with just about everyone.

~~~
gnusty_gnurc
It's tough being libertarian in that sense that there's very few people
amenable to what you have to say cause it's (at least in my experience) always
interpreted as something an enemy would say. As though since what you're
saying doesn't obviously line up with the party dogma of whoever you're
talking to, it just gets grouped into whatever's the polar opposite.

So I'd definitely agree that no matter who I'm talking to - liberal or
conservative friends - they're assuming I'm left or right wing (the opposite
of whatever they are).

~~~
tracker1
It's definitely rough... I've literally argued against both sides depending on
some nitpicky points. I generally get the sentiment either way, I just
disagree on the approach mostly because they tend to encroach on individual
rights.

People have every privilege to be an asshole so long as they aren't infringing
on another's rights. But they all seem to want to infringe on other's rights.

------
thrawy9939938
I think base assumptions and understandings are different for different
people. However, we are now fully polarized on the topics.

Lockdowns: you fully support lockdowns or you want a hair cut or to murder my
grandma. No room for any other interpretation or asking of questions.

Protests: you are literally a racist if you are not actively anti-racist. No
room for other interpretations or asking of questions. Do not try to distract
from the core message by talking about looting or rioting.

Politics: either you want to remove Trump from office or you are a racist or
otherwise a terrible person. No room for other interpretation.

De-funding the police: you are a racist or a fascist and support police
brutality or you want police removed from normal public interaction. Again, no
room for a different interpretation or dialog.

I feel the problem is polarized politics and lack of room for dialog. Also, as
a white male, my thoughts are not wanted nor valid. To the point that I feel I
have to post with a throwaway since I've already have folks I thought were
friends and have known me for years question if I am a racist because I don't
support looting/rioting.

~~~
orwin
You see, this is argumentative red herring. I could do the same for the other
side (maybe not the "politics" point, but honestly i don't think this is even
a point...). You should do the same work against what you think, you will be
less polarized.

BTW: `Do not try to distract from the core message by talking about looting or
rioting.`

I'm pro-protest every time there is one, even dumb ones like Civitas or
others. Riots and looting and what's destroyed are the most interesting thing
to understand. Yellow vest in France destroyed expensive and electric cars,
bus stops, Velib stations. Anti-capitalists Black blocs destroyed Mcdonald's
and banks. BLM destroyed small stores, community infrastructure... This is
saying a lot about how they see themselves and who they're against. Do you
think the same?

------
cryptonector
What FB debacle? I don't use FB, so I'd not know.

------
webartifex
why is this thread flagged?

