

Faux Friendship - jed_s
http://chronicle.com/article/Faux-Friendship/49308/

======
jerf
It is hard to see through the veils of history, but one of the things that
always strikes me is that if you sit down and really try to put all the pieces
together, what you find is an alien world, far more alien than most supposedly
alien worlds of science fiction, especially if we're talking about going back
all the way to Ancient Greece. What we think of in our bones as civilization
doesn't exist then. The closest thing that might get you there is farming
communities in the Midwest... with no power, or cell phones, or cars, or
houses, with dangerous wild animals still roaming about, no medical treatment,
no firearms, and no prior 21st-century civilization thought patterns, and
you're still only sort of glimpsing it. Friendship wasn't an affectation, it
was a _necessity_ ; humans are effectively incapable of surviving as an
individual with no social support, and these people were, by modern standards,
in a constant state of just barely scraping by. Even wealthy people were still
just one bad fall or cut from a lingering death. When reading about the
ancient past one must always be sure to keep this backdrop in mind, and not
surreptitiously sneak in a modern setting for the drama in your head.

As some people say, we're already in a Singularity relative to ancient
Grecians, inasmuch as they couldn't understand our world at all... and I think
it's true in the opposite direction, too. History doesn't make any sense at
all unless you learn to stop seeing it through 20th/21st century
preconceptions about ethics or civilization. (And I'm not saying I've got a
grasp on the older preconceptions, I've just observed that using my "default
set" certainly doesn't have much explanatory power for why people do what they
do in the past.)

I'd submit for your consideration the idea that what we see in ancient
friendships is more like what we'd today call the "war buddy" bond, because
life was a lot more like a war back then. As we move through history and more
and more people are no longer engaged in war with Nature just to survive, we
see that level of bond fade because we see the conditions that give rise to
that level of bond fade. Personally, I would say this is cause for celebration
more than sadness.

~~~
nostrademons
I think it's a lot like surplus manufacturing capacity or six sigma in an
economic context. In general, surplus manufacturing capacity is bad because it
means you're not utilizing your capital to the fullest extent possible. It
means you built more factories than you need, so some are sitting idle. And
six sigma is good because it reduces variability in quality, which lets you
streamline your processes so that there's no wasted effort.

Except then you get World War 2, when suddenly everyone was dropping bombs on
each other, and countries _needed_ that surplus manufacturing capacity, and
the winner ended up being the one that had the most. Or when 3M introduced six
sigma, they found a dramatic decrease in creativity and innovation, because
those _require_ waste and variability.

Friendship is wasted when times are good, because you don't _need_ your
friends, and they take up time and attention that could be devoted to more
productive pursuits. But if you suffer a bad breakup or suddenly get sick,
it's awful nice to have somebody who's got your back unconditionally. There's
a trade-off between efficiency and reliability, and someone who is always
perfectly efficient is usually pretty unreliable when unexpected events occur.

~~~
chipsy
One way I think of it is that friendship of yore was designed for a harsher,
crueler world, with serious limits on how much one could broadcast.

Today the opportunities to connect are plentiful; going online can feel like
you're at a 24/7 party with a constant stream of new guests and new ideas, so
long as you put in the _effort_ to set it up that way. If the only thing you
do is add a few acquaintances to Facebook, the article is correct - you won't
get any value out of it. But a strategy that has more specific goals in mind
than "be friends" is only empowered by the social tools.

~~~
itmag
One strategy I've used is what I call a social honeypot.

Ie create a project (in my case a magazine) which attracts a passive "income"
of new acquaintances who are automatically selected (because they bothered to
contact you) for compatibility.

------
nostrademons
Friendship's always struck me as closely tied in with serendipity.

When I was in college, I had a wide circle of online friends in the Harry
Potter fandom. I figured I'd never meet most of them, many of them were just
bored high-schoolers, and a few had pretty serious mental problems. My parents
were like "Why do you spend so much time talking to these people?" Hell, when
I've mentioned the Harry Potter fandom as a significant life event in a past
comment here, tptacek was like "Fanfiction? Seriously?"

But over the years since then, that group of friends gave me tons of emotional
support through my first forays into dating and my academic difficulties in
college. They gave me the advice that eventually convinced me to stay in
school. Advice on, and a ready-made friends-group for, my semester abroad in
New Zealand. My first software project, carried through from conception to
completion. The nucleus of my social contacts while I was heads-down working
on my startup after college. My job at Google. My first kiss, repeat date, and
make-out session.

You can't always predict what good things will result from a relationship with
someone. One of the things that I hated about the startup scene was that
everyone _wants_ something - they'll take you out for coffee to pitch their
new startup that needs a technical cofounder, but as soon as you make it clear
that you're not ready to do that at this time, you never hear from them again.
I never expected that I would get a job at Google from someone in the Harry
Potter fandom - after all, she wasn't even a CS major, I'd met her in person
all of once, and our conversations consisted mostly of squeeing over
Harry/Luna and nothing technical. But when I started looking for jobs and
asked who was hiring, she was like "I know this guy, I can vouch for him", and
I'd say it's worked out pretty well for everyone involved.

~~~
tptacek
For what it's worth: I didn't mean to sound so dismissive; I was genuinely
surprised. Sorry about that.

(This wasn't a thread _about_ fanfic, btw).

------
drunkpotato
If he had an interesting, thought-provoking point to make, I couldn't extract
it through the technophobia and sweeping generalizations and general framework
of data-impoverished assumptions that began the article. At the risk of
committing the same sin, it does seem that this is the very essence of the
out-of-touch article. The author feels greatly disconnected, or for some
reason feels like other people are too greatly disconnected for his comfort,
and blames modernity. If I am (shallowly) reading this correctly, that is not
an original nor profound thought.

~~~
keiferski
Why does any criticism of technology instantly get labeled as technophobia or
luddism? Is it not good to ask why technology X is in your life, and if you
want it to be?

~~~
drunkpotato
I think the burden of proof is on the author of:

> Yet what, in our brave new mediated world, is friendship becoming? The
> Facebook phenomenon, so sudden and forceful a distortion of social space,
> needs little elaboration. Having been relegated to our screens, are our
> friendships now anything more than a form of distraction?

to show he is _not_ technophobic.

Similar missives have been written for each generation. So I am skeptical and
don't think he met that burden in this article.

~~~
chunky1994
Even if he is technophobic, I think he's illustrated his point clearly and
with force. What makes you skeptical of his point of view?

------
grovulent
So I've actually gone ahead and built and app for Google+ to help people
curate more substantive relationships on the platform - so that in principle
online social networking doesn't have to be about being superficial.

<http://puttheeffortin.com>

The idea is that it's just a matter of better managing the relationships and
expending energy in a more efficient way - on those relationships that yield
the most value.

I've only just launched and have no idea if the site will fly under load - or
even if it needs more work before expecting humans to use it. Wouldn't mind if
some of the HN folk would be up for giving it a test run...

edit - btw - needs a webkit browser. Opera and FF latest versions will work -
but performance is bad.

~~~
sjp3
_Assess the strength of your relationships on Google+ in terms of how often
people are commenting, sharing and plussing your public posts and vice versa.
See at a glance where you need to apply more energy in your G+ relationships
and identify those who aren't reciprocating as much as you would like._

How does this make social networking _less_ superficial?

~~~
grovulent
I think I'd need to know what aspect of it particularly makes you say that to
answer you adequately...

But the problem I have on G+ is that it's hard to remember people that are
willing to engage - the ones with whom you've actually had a substantive
conversation. Of course - the mere numbers doesn't capture this - and I'm not
pretending that it does. I've got more features planned to build upon this
basis - but it gives you a starting point and at least jogs your memory about
who it is that might deserve more of your time.

The intuition behind it is similar to when you keep calling that mate of yours
to go for a beer but he keeps palming you off and not returning your calls.
Eventually you'll come to conclude that they aren't willing to put in much
effort and you'll start expending energy elsewhere.

It's relatively easy to keep track of this economy in our offline worlds
because the number of people was not very high. But it's much harder to track
online - our brains just aren't designed to do it. That's why we end up
frittering away our time with whatever flashes up on the screen next. An app
like mine is about helping us focus our attention on the places it is most
deserved.

------
hrktb
This is intersting for all the historical context thing that is refreshing,
and so boring because he takes the facebook and other social networks messages
so much at face value in it's message.

I don't think anyone needed to read 10 pages to understand that when facebook
told you "you are now friend with xxx" it doesn't mean anything much as "this
person is now on your feed and can be seen as so", and the real work you did
to become friend happens parallely to that. And keeping friendship also has no
direct relations to the medium you use (before facebook you sent post cards to
your friends, not 10 page missives, and it wasn't much bounding in itself).

It's well writtten but lacks insight in what people really see in a social
site.

------
angelortega
The example in the article about Achilles and Patroclus is not what we would
call a "friendship": Achilles was Patroclus' mentor, what means he was his
master and had sexual privileges over him. It's not a one-to-one, both-are-
equal relationship; it's more similar to a master-slave one. They were sexual
partners, not friends ("friend" had different connotations in the classic
world).

~~~
Nick_C
Yes. I read the article, becoming more sceptical as I went. In my opinion, he
underplays modern relationships (relegating them all to Facebook-like) and
overplays classical relationships.

It would be good to recognise that he is controversial and is an English Lit
professor, not a historian or anthropologist.

------
kghose
I have found that good friends are hard to find. I feel that this hasn't
changed much down the ages. Superficial friendship depends strongly on the
culture and probably did so down the ages, too.

------
danso
( _this response is not meant to be a defense of Facebook in particular; the
essay in the OP is a critique of digital friendships in general_ )

What trite. It reminds me of the essays about growing up in the 50s, when
everything was simple and everyone got along unless you happened to be black
or gay. If the only way you connected to friends was to write a "10-page
missive" then it's quite likely you conducted your personal relationships in a
way that made you unable to see that not everyone made and continued
friendships through 10-page letters.

There's nothing wrong with long walks on the beaches and long wistful letters,
but not everyone was able to maintain friendships like that. I'm thankful to
live in a world where I can make good friends from random chats, and yes, some
of these low-energy-at-first, random connections were made through Facebook.
It doesn't mean that these friendships don't progress into something deeper.

Not everyone gets to live the kind of life that a Yale professor (the author
of the OP) gets to lead. That doesn't mean that the ways we connect now are
any less valid or meaningful than the epic moments and letters he apparently
shares with his close friends.

~~~
Mithrandir
Interesting. So, in another words, how you form friendships that are
meaningful to you may not be specifically valid for someone like the OP, but
as they are valid for you, then the way you form those friendships is valid
(if we are to assume valid means "it works" and not to compare to some
standard.)

