[HN Gopher] Friendship and Social Fitness
___________________________________________________________________
Friendship and Social Fitness
Author : paulpauper
Score : 64 points
Date : 2024-07-21 17:28 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.robkhenderson.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.robkhenderson.com)
| two-sandwich wrote:
| Delightful read. I second the authors sentiments about awkward
| reconnections during COVID Lockdowns that turned into rekindled
| friendships.
|
| I wonder what the interaction between having friends and having a
| close family is. Does friendship mean more (or less) if your
| family bonds are stronger?
|
| Better schedule in some time to meet a friend this week - maybe
| in place of going to the gym!
| hypertexthero wrote:
| Friends are family you can choose, I've heard, and I agree!
| romans_12_9_10 wrote:
| These three paragraphs seem to be duplicated:
| One lesson here is preventive -- don't let your friends become
| strangers. The more time that passes between conversations, the
| more they become an unfamiliar person. This is
| important for a society that is growing increasingly concerned
| about loneliness and friendlessness. Some even suggest that we
| are in a "friendship recession," with 20 percent of single men
| now saying they don't have any close friends. It's not just men,
| though. A 2019 survey found that 30 percent of millennials of
| both sexes said they are always or often lonely, and 27 percent
| said they have no close friends. Gen Z doesn't
| look much different and might even be in a worse position. In her
| 2023 book "Generations," the psychologist Jean Twenge points out
| that from the 1970s into the 2000s, teenagers spent about two
| hours per day with friends. By 2019, this had dropped to just one
| hour per day. In the 1970s, more than half of 12th graders got
| together with their friends almost every day. By 2019, only 28
| percent did.
|
| I was wondering if I accidentally scrolled up...no, turns out the
| text was actually duplicated.
| zokier wrote:
| > It's unwise to discard these investments or be reluctant to
| recover them, especially when the cost is a simple message and
| conversation every now and then.
|
| Hilariously out of touch quote in article that is on a surface
| level so thoroughly researched. There is nothing simple about
| "message and conversation every now and then"
|
| The author touches on this themselves:
|
| > I was relieved -- I didn't want to dwell on my present
| circumstances because it would have highlighted how much our
| paths have diverged.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Hey how are you doing, it's been a while and I thought I'd
| check in.
|
| Hey thanks! Things are going pretty well, how about you?
|
| Same. We should get lunch or grab a beer soon.
|
| Yeah sounds good, I'd like that.
|
| Simple.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Wait, do normal people really have conversations like that?
| WTF?
| angarg12 wrote:
| I'm not so sure. I come from southern Europe where doing
| something like that is easy, because people mean it. But
| living abroad I can probably count with one hand the times
| that someone made good on that. Sometimes I followed up with
| someone, just to get excuses and vague answers. I had to
| learn the hard and awkward way that most people are just
| trying to be polite and don't really want to "stay in touch".
|
| Doing it seriously takes real work.
| bgroat wrote:
| Literally whenever someone crosses my mind I shoot them a text,
| "Hey zokier, I was thinking about ya! Hope you're well!"
|
| Trivially easy and people treat me like I have social super
| powers
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| Considering personal relationships as "investments" of sorts
| disgusts me to the core...
| greg_V wrote:
| out of all the metaphors the author could've used. why not just
| go with a gardening example? friendships grow like trees, they
| need tending and they grow stronger with age.
|
| especially because we're all familiar with friendships that
| turn out to be purely transactional relationships like with
| drinking buddies which fizzle out as soon as the activity
| itself is no longer welcoming. treating friendships literally
| as investments encourages surface level transactional
| relationships, which is the opposite of what you'd want to be
| happy!
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _out of all the metaphors the author could 've used. why
| not just go with a gardening example? friendships grow like
| trees, they need tending and they grow stronger with age._
|
| IDK, people generally grow and care for trees as investments
| (wood, fruit), research, or sometimes maybe a hobby. Not sure
| which one would apply to friendships best.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I've had many, _many_ close, intimate (It 's entirely possible to
| have intimate relationships with other men/people you aren't
| romantically involved with), and meaningful friendships (and
| frenemyships), over the last 43 years.
|
| Long story, but I'm a member of an organization, where we have a
| Common Purpose, and regularly work together.
|
| Many of these relationships have been somewhat "transient," where
| we were very close, for a time, and have drifted apart. No
| animus, we just went different paths. I always enjoy running into
| them, later, and take pleasure in their success (or sadness, in
| their not-success).
|
| I'd say that most of my current close circle have been there for
| around 25 years.
|
| I'm quite grateful for it. I know that there's a huge problem,
| with folks (especially men), my age, becoming quite isolated,
| and, in my opinion, it is quite unhealthy; both mentally, _and_
| physically.
|
| To have a friend, I must _be_ a friend. It 's been very important
| for me to be as open-minded, honest, and accepting, as I want
| others to be, for me.
|
| I have also had a number of fairly close friendships, that began
| as antagonistic relationships. I've learned not to burn bridges.
|
| One of the behaviors that I see here (and elsewhere, in teh
| Internets Tubes), is folks that begin relationships with attacks.
| We've never ever had any interaction with someone, and our _very
| first contact, ever_ , is an attack.
|
| It seems to be a sign of the times. I suspect that remote
| communication makes that easier. It's a lot easier to attack
| someone, if you are not within right hook range.
|
| Also, I think that limited interaction makes it easy to think of
| others as one-dimensional "caricatures," and we can ignore the
| aspects that we may find in common, or attractive. I think that
| it is also easy to project false narratives and motives onto
| people on the other end of an electronic medium.
|
| It's been my experience that every single person that I've ever
| met, has a life story, and, often, that story has a great many
| places that intersect or run parallel to my own. I have also been
| surprised, at finding that I have great admiration for some
| folks, once I learn more about them, and that helps to mitigate
| the places we disagree.
|
| The problem is, though, I also see this antagonistic behavior
| translated IRL, and, in some venues (like this one, where a lot
| of extremely influential folks hang out casually), it can result
| in real personal damage.
| mihaic wrote:
| I find something disturbing in using capitalist analogies like
| "investing" to reason about core human activities, and simply
| pinging people to keep in touch.
|
| In this mode of thinking having a group of friend from diverse
| backgrounds for instance can be seen be like a loose corporation,
| with division of labor to model the various professions everyone
| has. Or advice and services can be traded in a social credit
| scheme between friends.
|
| In the end, once we've been dehumanized by our lifestyle, the
| answer needs to include some rehumanizing message, such as
| "actually care about your friend, help them if you can and spend
| quality time with them, they are you in different circumstances".
| paulpauper wrote:
| I am not sure how it's an investment. The analogy or metaphor
| fails in this case.
| srid wrote:
| I believe OP is referring to the whole thing being mechanical
| and planned rather than it being authentic (such as reaching
| out to people out of genuine interest and mutual regard).
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-07-21 23:07 UTC)