16 ms·

Friendships form via shared context, not shared activities

530 points by Kortaggio 4y ago

gumby 4y ago
Adults make a lot of friends via kids, because there’s a combination of shared context and many forced interactions.
PaulHoule 4y ago
I think of that show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic where the whole point is that the friends are all very different.
gringoDan 4y ago
I think this phenomenon is part of the reason it's difficult to form friendships as adults. The shared context that the article mentions requires a lot of time around your circle of people, just "hanging out". It's tough to make that time as an adult with a career, family, etc. This may be why college friendships can be so strong – often a lot of time is spent living and working around friends by default, without needing to schedule it.
- hosteur 4y ago
  If this is the case then why wouldn’t workplaces create lots of strong friendships? There is a lot of shared context. I’m not sure I buy author’s brushing this away as being because coworkers are trained to replace you. There is lots of competition in school and college also.
  - bitcurious 4y ago
    To make friends you need to make mistakes. Litigation culture in the workplace prevents that.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      I don't see this. I've yet to be afraid of being sued by a co-worker and after a couple of decades I can assure you that I've made plenty of mistakes.
      - slothtrop 4y ago
        If you aren't more guarded around co-workers than your friends, maybe you should be.
        jacquesm 4y ago
        Why on earth would a co-worker sue me?
        slothtrop 4y ago
        Suing? They can get you terminated, or hinder your advancement. Anything that can be construed as reflecting badly on you or the company can be used against you.
      - bitcurious 4y ago
        In the edge case, your failed-friend coworker would sue the corporation. This would cost corporation money. The corporation doesn’t care about you having friends, but does care about losing money. As such structures the workplace to minimize the sorts of free expression that creates “shared context” but also creates room for error - discussions of politics, religion, your health, ethnicity, age, etc. - topics that in the best case build trust and curiosity and lead to friendship. My comment isn’t a commentary on people - who are mostly loving, reasonable, and forgiving. It’s a commentary on incentives and the structures those incentives lead to.
    - Sirened 4y ago
      is this a thinly veiled complaint about being hit with sexual harassment complaints? The simple trick to solve this problem is not to sexually harass your friends either
      - nickff 4y ago
        Why did you make two logical leaps just to arrive at an accusation? From the HN Guidelines: " Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. "
        eyelidlessness 4y ago
        Having backed out of including a reply with my downvote—which I seldom do, but couldn’t find a productive response in me despite some effort—I’m curious what your charitable interpretation is. I went through all of mine, and none of them reflected well on the commenter.
        bitcurious 4y ago
        Bizarre but illustrative that I have to defend myself against a nebulous “uncharitable interpretation.” Are you free (according to corporate policy) to ask your coworkers about religion, health, romance, politics, ethnicity, etc.? I’m comfortable discussing all of the above with my friends, yet each is to some extent restricted in the professional context, either by default or with seniority.
        MrJohz 4y ago
        Not the previous commenter, but yes? I have literally never worked in a place where talking about that has been forbidden. I mean, talking about it offensively is obviously not on the table, but I've discussed literally every single one of those with colleagues before. Is this a cultural thing? I'm from the UK, and I'm working now in Germany. Perhaps things are different in the US?
  - Dracophoenix 4y ago
    The workplace is more like a relay race than a basketball team. Everyone may share the same project, but they all have different parts to it, and are unlikely to share the same or a sufficiently similar understanding of it.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    It does. A lot of younger knowledge workers (not at all restricted to STEM) make good friends in their first job because of shared context. Eventually increased responsibility through experience means you necessarily open yourself up less and spend more time mentoring, guiding, or otherwise leading.
  - Enginerrrd 4y ago
    In my experience, workplaces HAVE created lots of strong friendships in my life. Though, it's interesting, it varies tremendously by workplace culture and the work you're doing. In my jobs doing manual labor or jobs involving a lot of boring hanging out (as a cashier / supervisor / lifeguard) I made lots of friendships. In jobs where it's been primarily knowledge work, I had a lot of good acquaintances, but rarely did that turn into more. I think that being able to talk makes a big difference. It's worth noting though that when I was a lifeguard, I was a long lived employee surrounded by short term employees. The culture was in flux. There are times when I fit in and we became good friends (which remain to this day) and there are times when I didn't fit in or like the people and didn't make any friends. The manual labor jobs produced more lasting friendships than the lifeguarding for whatever reason. Something about actually suffering with others and working toward common aims and being able to talk about stuff produced the best friendships. (I also think that the nature of the work filtered out some of the lower quality people too, and that played a role.)
  - bobsmooth 4y ago
    Pretty much every friend I have is a co-worker.
  - armchairhacker 4y ago
    I doubt “coworkers trying to replace you” has much of an impact. The bigger issue with some workplaces is that they’re not really close-quarters, because they’re very impersonal. Sure you might be all in the same room a lot, but you’re largely discussing business stuff or working independently. Even corporate “parties” and retreats can be surprisingly professional and unnatural. It’s almost like you don’t really “interact” with the person, you interact with their business facade. If you’re not just talking business with your coworkers, you’re actually talking about life and hanging out and not having a fake professional personality, then you do form friendships. I say this from experience. Though talking about non-professional things and not putting on a facade also makes you vulnerable, so those companies where everyone is competing against each other happen to be the ones where everyone is impersonal.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    Friends happen when you spend time with the same people in different contexts. That’s why most workplace relationships don’t result in friends.
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    Workplaces do create lots of strong friendships. In the past, they were also one of the biggest sources of romantic relationships. Though that has changed, people are still friends through work.
- zamfi 4y ago
  Having a family offers a natural avenue for this, though: parents of your kids' friends share a lot of context with you.
- goethes_kind 4y ago
  The reason friendships between adults are hard is because adults are reluctant to make themselves vulnerable, but opening yourself to others and making yourself vulnerable is exactly what you need to start building a shared history of living (shared context).
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    I just learned this in my mind 30s. So many hollow friendships before.
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    It has to be something like this because I add to my list of close friends fairly often - so I have lots of people to lean on (as I discovered when I found myself debilitated by an accident recently). I'm mid thirties and the last close friend who was willing to help me shower when I couldn't is someone I got to know 3 months ago.
  - bradlys 4y ago
    YMMV. I found that least in SV - people are so guarded that they’re rarely ever going to be vulnerable even with anyone new they meet. Maybe it’s the crowds I keep meeting but everyone is uncomfortable with even talking about what they want from life - let alone what they struggle with. I think many people here don’t ever open up except with their therapist and parents.
- JamesBarney 4y ago
  Yeah it's this, just shared time, specifically time hanging out shooting the shit. For instance of all of my coworkers I am paradoxically the closest to are the ones from out of town. I think this is because when they visited they had no other obligations so we ended up shooting the shit a lot. Where co-workers who lived here were always busy with family/life obligations.
  - formerkrogemp 4y ago
    When working 'busy season' in accounting 50+ hours per week for 4 months, there's not time for friends, and barely time for family. I won't work for that toxic culture again.
- danenania 4y ago
  A hack that takes advantage of this is to look for activities/events where you spend a lot of sustained time with others. So instead of a meetup once a month, go to a week-long retreat or an all weekend hackathon. Or if there’s someone you’d like to get closer to as a friend, instead of just inviting them to hang out once in awhile, invite them to go on a trip somewhere. Once you reach the tipping point of enough shared time/context by fast-forwarding in this way, it’s easier to then settle into a more ordinary rhythm where you see people periodically but still feel they are real friends.
  - tomc1985 4y ago
    If you're into music, festivals are fantastic for this. I was just at such a festival, in an MDMA-fueled reminiscence of just how lucky my friends and I are to have found each other. Through years of simply showing up, gifting my art, and being open to new people, I now have a tight party crew which has supported each other through some of the darkest shit I have ever experienced in my life. Deaths, overdoses, bad trips, poverty, angry neighbors/property owners, whatever... these guys have my back and I have theirs. I may be a thirty-something loner and introvert, but these guys are my bass music battle buddies. Highly recommended.
    - danenania 4y ago
      That's awesome. How long did it take/how many festivals before you started to feel they were real friends you can count on in day-to-day life rather than just being 'festival friends'?
      - tomc1985 4y ago
        The relationships are generally cultivated over time. I have been active in the local dance music underground for all of my adult life, but in this case familiarity was established after showing up at a couple of desert events and hanging out. Later on, I was invited to a house party with some of the same folks where I was accepted into the "family". During all this I would show up at events with my camera, take really good photos, and then give them away, and that got me noticed and made me the unofficial-official photographer of the group. This was several years ago, and the story has advanced considerably since then. edit- To answer your question directly, it took a few years to really feel that these guys were more than just party friends. I think the catalyst here was us, as a group, navigating through shared tragedy. The 'family' was already formed when I joined, and it definitely took a while to feel like I was someone more than just a guy in the periphery. Gifting is big in my scene, and if you want to speed up the process that is probably the best way to start -- art, food, whatever you can provide that other people might want or need. edit2- It just occurred to me that gifting is a great lifehack in general for ingratiating yourself into a new group. The key is that it has to be something they genuinely want. For example, I went to visit a friend of mine in Chile and filled up about half of my luggage with candy, alcohol, and some other things that I knew my friend would appreciate. She was so happy and told all her friends, and in an instant I had a whole group of people to hang out with -- who very specifically told me that they appreciated the gifts -- while I was visiting.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > It's tough to make that time as an adult with a career, family, etc. It's more difficult than college, where everyone is thrown together into close quarters. However, it's not impossible. It's just different and requires different techniques. If you sit back and wait for the contexts to come to you, it's going to be a slow journey. If you go out of your way to create those contexts, it's actually not that difficult to find and make new friends. Hosting events, BBQs, get togethers, and any other social event is an easy way to start it off. This gets massively easier when you have kids, IMO, because you can now also host play dates, invite other families along to activities, meet other parents through daycare or school, and so on. It won't happen if you're staying at home or waiting for people to come to you, of course, but it's not that hard to get out and meet new people and friends-of-friends once you start getting out there and making an effort. Even work can be an easy pivot to new connections if you make an effort. In-person makes this especially easy: Get into the habit of inviting people out to lunch with you once a week and ask if they can think of anyone else to invite along. The bigger the company, the easier it is to be exposed to a lot of new people this way. Again, it won't happen if you're not making an effort, but the amount of effort required is much smaller than it may seem.
  - gumby 4y ago
    I became closer friends, and even friends at all, with folks I knew from college years after graduating. As noted in this discussion, we had a lot of shared context that became more meaningful as we grew up.
- fleddr 4y ago
  I think you're right, you need proximity and significant time together to create and maintain friendships. Which is very hard to organize with adults. Another way to look at it is the shift in priorities. When I was young, all I cared about is friends. I found it more important than school or my parents. I maximized my time with friends. As adult "friend", you're way down the list of priorities, after the job, family, personal health, chores, recovery time...and then there's you, the friend. It's not malice, adults simply have too much shit to manage. Some might be so busy that the last thing they need is a new friend.
  - eastbound 4y ago
    Need? They need friends, they don’t have time for any. I went to ICMI (International Conference on Men’s Issues) 2018 and the thing I was most surprised of is, a men help group is often just having a beer together. Fathers have been so busy with raising babies, maintaining the house and performing at career, that when it breaks down, they just need a beer, even with unknown people.
    - ungamedplayer 4y ago
      We're in an odd world where this is the case.
    - fleddr 4y ago
      I get what you're saying and couldn't agree more. My take was a bit more literal, the situation were one already has "enough" friends and is not in search of making new ones. Not to say that one is not open to meeting new people if it happens by chance, instead to say to not being open to turning that into the commitment of a new friendship. I'm saying this mostly for people that lack friends and are looking to make new ones. It's good to understand the sobering reality that some may dodge the chance of a deep new friendship developing. Not because they don't like you, simply because they can't take on the commitment.
  - ajmurmann 4y ago
    The priority thing is an interesting one. When I was a kid I was just frequently bored and so were the other kids, so we'd hang out. I'm never bored anymore. I might be depressed and not want to do anything, but that's different from bored. With all the entertainment and things to do at all times, I wonder if current children will have the same experience as we did.
- 88913527 4y ago
  I regret not going to college in the city I ultimately knew I'd end up living in. It was a ton of wasted social capital. I did end up saving money though (college city was cheaper), but it probably wasn't worth the savings. I still do keep in touch with a few people, but it's "annual Zoom call" catchup level of socializing: not enough to fill the day-to-day.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    I regret not going to college because here I am now with near 0 social capital (and very limited with how I can pivot my professional life).
- throwaway290 4y ago
  IRL I find it exceedingly easy to form connections with others (in my 30s), it doesn't take much time at all. I tend to be in situations where meeting new people happens (coworking spaces, cafes, big cities, going to other cities and staying in places with shared spaces etc). However, 99% of the time I feel disinclined to solidify those connections and create the dependencies the article calls "shared context", because I actively do not find I have much in common with these people. Often I resist accumulating that "shared context" and actively evade and ghost them, other times I don't but later I wish I did. The reason is that by now I have a pretty well-formed worldview, and I know most others have one as well, and I am correspondingly sensitive to finer differences between them. And with meeting people in various IRL communities, the likelihood you are compatible in this way is hovering around zero. *** Generally, I strongly disagree with the article, find it meandering and struggle with the unorthodox meaning it's trying to force onto the phrase "shared context". In fact, in the very next paragraph it gives a stark but much more suitable term for what it wants to say: a web of dependencies. Friendships may form via such a web, but good friendships usually don't. It's a legacy way of sorts, and in our age worth actively avoiding. An example of friendships formed via these webs is often childhood classmates. The only reason you may end up being friends is geographical proximity. There may well be nothing in common between you otherwise. If you let such friendships solidify, they will weigh you down or you will have to endure the psychological pain of ripping yourself out of that web of dependencies. Meeting people in IRL communities is like that, it suffers from people being randomly put together. Accumulating "shared context" (again, web of dependencies) due to geographic proximity alone is the last thing you want to be doing. If you happened to meet someone due to chance IRL encounter, you have to vet them 10x more carefully before letting the web grow, because the chance the encounter is worthwhile is very low. By contrast, shared context (the actual thing, not the meaning forced by the article) is easy to come by thanks to the Web, and there're plenty of people who have compatible worldviews yet are different enough to be interesting to engage with. All you need is try and get a feel for all the various ways of signaling. If you are sorta good at something like art or engineering (yes, this can be hard to know for sure), be a bit brave to go more public with it through social channels, etc. Establishing IRL acquaintance later with casual meetups is easy thanks to relaxing travel restrictions.
jdkee 4y ago
Proximity, unplanned interactions and privacy are three key components or forming new friendships. See https://www.businessinsider.com/things-that-help-people-make-new-friends-2014-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/things-that-help-people-make...
- ghostly_s 4y ago
  Thanks, some actual evidence-based claims instead if this pointless unsupported conjecture.
tarr11 4y ago
I'm having trouble understanding what the author means by "context" in this article. It seems to mean "your location within your network of people"?
- Kortaggio 4y ago
  Hi! Author here. I'll admit I struggled to find a more precise word than "context". What I mean is that a friendship is not the 1:1 interaction you have with your friend, but that friend's omni-directional interaction with every other friend. Their location within a network is one way of putting it. In other words, their entanglements in your web of mutual commitments, shared history, and collective responsibility.
- prawn 4y ago
  Maybe think of it like a shared challenge. You might be going through parenting together, or starting a business or some path through life that you have in common.
rozim 4y ago
Well, a variation on this is what Nobel prize winner Bob Dylan says in Brownsville Girl, that shared suffering is important: "Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than people who are most content.” Maybe suffering here can be interpreted as shared challenges.
qgin 4y ago
On average, people need about 100 hours of interaction to feel a friendship connection. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0265407518761225 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0265407518761225
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  Given the methodology of the study I wouldn't trust it one bit.
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    I've felt (and still have) friendships to this day that were formed in a single conversation over a shared university class and then a bit after. I've tried to make other friendships work by maximising time spent with someone, and it basically never worked. Highly frustrating if you're the systematising type.
baxtr 4y ago
I think he's onto something. Then again, why aren't we still friends with everyone we spent a lot of time with when we were in elementary school? I fear a critical component is missing.
- Pamar 4y ago
  Not only that but... how many of us have brothers and sisters... but are not friends with them?
  - em-bee 4y ago
    you can spend a decade living with someone without any shared struggles. relationships can have the same problem. they love each other, but they never had to actually rely on each other. if that weren't so there would not be any divorces.
  - Volrath89 4y ago
    True. But it's kind of sad if you think about it. Brothers and sisters will be there forever until death. Unlike friends or relationships which can be temporary. From this year on, I am at least trying to get closer to my sister even if we have not been "friends" before.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    I have a surprisingly decent relationship with most of y nuclear family with one exception, most of my brothers live hundreds of thousands of miles away from each other. I’m almost certain at this point that in order to maintain a good relationship with my family distance is required. When my parents moved last, they ended up close to family that they were really close to and far away from family they had feuded with in the past. By the time I visited last year, they relationship with the family they were close to had severely degraded, and all the family they used to fight with were friendly.
- layer8 4y ago
  Because the context changed and lastingly stopped being a shared one?
lapcat 4y ago
I found this article strange, because the author seemed to be reversing cause and effect. Isn't "shared context" — trust, loyalty, love, belonging, safety — the result of friendship rather than the cause of friendship? How can you trust and be loyal to someone you just met? "We can’t help but desperately compete in this unwinnable game of having the best collection of attributes to show off." I don't get it, because friends don't need each other to be the best person in the world at any given thing. Having things in common seems to be enough, no? Does anyone need to be "unique", a special snowflake in the world? In some sense friends are interchangeable, in that it's a total accident of circumstances which few of the billions of people on Earth you happen to hang out with. But I'm not clear on why "global uniqueness" is necessary for friendship. That seems to be an impossible standard, and it's not the basis of any friendship I've ever had. "In my early attempts to make friends, I tried inviting people with shared interests to activities like sailing or grabbing brunch". I think the missing ingredient here is simply time. It's hard to become friends in just a few hours. [Edit:] "One way to create a shared context is through shared struggle. This is why many organizations implement ritualized hazing to initiate new members, but the important thing is not the hazing, it’s the sense that you are working together with your fellow humans to achieve a super-human goal." The super-human goal of getting your butt paddled by a frat boy? No, hazing is just a perverse power play, nothing more. They do hazing because they can, and get a kick out of it.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  >How can you trust and be loyal to someone you just met? Duty. that's what the military often is like and my experiences with military friendships overlap a lot with the idea that long lasting friendships are build around context, although I think 'shared sense of purpose' describes it somewhat better. Starting a business together or going through disease or really anything where people have real skin in the game and there's something at stake is where people can form deep, meaningful bonds quickly.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    Are you close friends with everyone you served with, though? Isn't there someone in the military you didn't like? ;-) AFAICT the formula for friendship is pretty simple: time + shared interests + personality/chemistry. The military is a good way to spend a lot of time together, and maybe a shared interest too.
civilized 4y ago
Shared context is necessary but I think shared perspectives and values are what ultimately matter. I have shared context with a lot of people at work but I'm only good friends with one or two. Very relatedly, my wife is my best friend, and I tend to become friends with people who are like her. (ugh, Wife Guy)
- em-bee 4y ago
  how close are you working with others? a small team that goes through developing and releasing a product will develop closer relationships than individuals who work by themselves just picking off items from the big task list
  - bradlys 4y ago
    I think his point is true even in smaller teams and environments. Unless you’re forced to be together like in the military - I don’t see people relating to one another as soon as that context breaks apart. The shared moral fibers are important. The people I talk to frequently outside of work after having left are people I share some deeper values with. Everyone else seems to not share the same values. (Not surprising either because many are not from a similar background or have gone through what my friends and I have experienced) I think shared values is paramount to friendships developing outside the workplace/collaborative environment. I’ve worked with hundreds of people professionally and through volunteering - very few ever translated because both of these things I volunteer for and work for attract very specific types of people who I do not get along with. I just happen to do both of these things - and my type of values and personality are more spread evenly in society.
    - em-bee 4y ago
      well of course there is a spectrum. not every team becomes a group of close-knit friends. it's just a bit more likely that friendships grow out of a team because there are more opportunities for a shared experience.
PKop 4y ago
Made a comment about this on another thread [0]: "True friendship comes mostly from shared struggle. Think sports teams, military, small teams at work, even childhood friends and the experience growing up. It is hard to establish anything meaningful of a connection with casual interactions, and expecting to just "party/play hard" with people you don't really know is putting the cart before the horse. First you must work hard together. I'd suggest joining a Crossfit gym or similar. I've had great success meeting people within the context of group workouts. It has regular class schedules, and provides a way to ease into social interactions at your own pace as you'll be around the same people regularly. Often this leads to opportunities to do things together outside of the classes. Additionally, there are likely individuals with similar disinterest in the common activities you mentioned in you CS classes. Finding opportunities to work with someone on class assignments, studying or projects together would fall in the "shared struggle" category." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28969047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28969047
- deleted 4y ago
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- vishnugupta 4y ago
  This has exactly been my observation and experience. There’s a poignant cartoon where two animals are on a long journey. One asks the other, “Is it about the journey or destination”. It gets a response “it’s about the company”. Bonds developed through shared struggles tend to be stronger. Even if that struggle is artificial one like going on a road bike trip with random strangers. Even parents bonding over is about their struggles of raising children.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  > I'd suggest joining a Crossfit gym or similar. Isn’t there a popular joke about these being cult-ish?
lordnacho 4y ago
Isn't activity just a part of context? Kick-about in the park -> simple activity, not many connections formed Weekly football team -> training, trips, club events -> more connections formed From my life the easiest connections are the ones where you're stuck together for a long time, eg education. You do pretty much everything together for years, you end up visiting each other's parents, you know each other's siblings, friends for life. In fact it's a reasonable test of how good friends you are with someone, whether you visited their house, know their family, know their friends, and know their CV. Work is a little bit different. People are coming and going, there's a hierarchy as well, and also people are busy and have already got a friend group. That being said there's still the "always together" element so plenty of opportunity. A more recent one is the "other parents in your kid's year". You end up hanging around your kid's friends parents a fair bit, and there's a fair chance they are similar to you. Which brings me to friend templates... Meet a few people and like the article says, you will find many have similar attributes. Often you end up meeting people who have basically had parallel lives to yourself, in two ways: - They literally have the same friends as you. I have this guy I went to school with briefly, who then turns up in all my friends' stories about what they got up to over the years, without me actually meeting him. Like a comedy show, he's just left when I arrive. I even had a random guy on an international flight tell me he was going to go see this guy, and I identified it because I knew so much about him. Anyway this is probably something that's happened to a fair few people, but they end up seeing the guy in real life and becoming friends. - They have done the same things as you, unconnected. They went to your uni, or studied what you studied. They work in your line of work. When you were kids, you had the same interests. They're from your city. These kinds of people are great seeds for relationships, but there's lots of them, and not all of them are watered.
productceo 4y ago
When the writer says friendships, I believe the writer means communities, such as community of place.
shaman1 4y ago
Congrats to the author, a good observation. I was just talking with one of my friends who recently became a father about how quickly new moms bond and form friendships due to the common context. But similar interests can make the bond stronger and deeper I'd argue.
SnowHill9902 4y ago
Cf. propinquity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propinquity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propinquity
pessimizer 4y ago
I had this realization somewhere around turning 30. I had been a touring musician in my teens and early twenties, and those were the friendships I had. I realized at one point that I had selected friends based on the kinds of music that they liked and whether I had partied with them, and that those were dumb criteria for friends. I vowed from then on I would choose who to hang out with based on how kind, thoughtful, and trustworthy they were, and that I would stop having endless worthless conversations about bands and other products. I could just enjoy the stuff that I was into without making it into a identity. Never looked back.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
> One way to create a shared context is through shared struggle. Can't agree with this enough. Nearly all of my best friendships have been people I've met through a shared goal that required a ton of work (e.g. some intensive artistic training as a youth, early startup jobs, etc.) I always realize how lucky I am to have had some of these intense "struggles" pretty early on in my life, as I've met people who didn't have that opportunity and I realize how my network of real friendships has greatly benefited from that.
iLoveOncall 4y ago
What I got out of this article is that some psychos share their wifi passwords with strangers.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  They assumed he was a engineer being social, not a social engineer.
ripvanwinkle 4y ago
I think the article is spot on about friendships forming from shared context. However, shared activities are often the precursor to shared context - so joining a swim team or a bike team or any group activity is still a good idea. Doing shared activities with some regularity is one way to build shared context and ultimately friendship.
going_ham 4y ago
I really can't understand the idea of friendship. Throughout my life, I never had the opportunity to foster a meaningful friendly relationship (one with trust, loyalty, support etc.) I found it to be apparent when people toss over the things I do. I have a lot of acquaintances and friends but very few close friends. Other than that, I feel like most people only talk with me when they absolutely need something. Otherwise, I am always the last person to be called on anything. > Becoming disentangled from your web of mutual commitments, shared history, and collective responsibility is to be rendered into a transaction, a slave. When author compared that having this "disentangled" social web is like being enslaved to business, I couldn't relate it. Isn't it completely normal? I don't want to idolize friendship, but everything will end eventually. I have experienced this throughout multiple phases of my life. No one of the so called friends made effort to contact me once I disappeared from social media. Only my close friends remained because I put the effort to do so. When I stopped putting effort, even these relationship got eroded (One can't clap with a single hand). This was the moment I realized that there is no such thing as friendship which author described. Life is what you give meaning to. It's nice that author is there to foster social meaning. For some reason the post felt like it's trying to create void that people without close friends are missing things from life. When I came in peace that I can't rely on any other person but myself, I found peace. Life has multiple dimensions. No one has to live in one way. It's better to find our own ways and be happy with it. PS: Just a minor opinion! Do not take it personally.
- deleted 4y ago
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- em-bee 4y ago
  did your friendship actually end or did you just loose sight of each other? how would you feel if that person contacted you now? i have friends that i consider close, that i only talk to once a year or even much longet. and not so close friends that i talk to every day. it is indeed the shared context, similar personal experiences and trust that connect us. the friendship doesn't stop just because we stop talking, it does stop however if something happens that breaks the trust between us and we have no opportunity to regain that trust by creating more shared context
wenc 4y ago
The NYTimes has an article "Why it is hard to make friends over 30" that gets reposted almost every year [1]. There's a quote about friendship conditions: "As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other, said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This is why so many people meet their lifelong friends in college, she added." But it's worthwhile noting that these conditions are simply that: conditions. Their existence do not inexorably lead to friendships. They are necessary but insufficient conditions. I've been in many situations where all 3 were present but I didn't feel a simpatico with the other person. I've taken weekend trips with people whom I never wanted to interact with again because I did not like what I saw on the trip (vulnerability can backfire -- if someone is vulnerable about how evil they are, I'm not likely to appreciate that). I don't really keep in touch with most college friends either. On the other hand, there's something that does lead to fast and lasting friendships for me: it's that indescribable feeling when someone is on the same "wavelength". It's a collocation of a bunch of things: the way they view the world (even if they are of a different political stripe), a shared sense of humor, and something you admire about them. Shared context definitely creates the conditions under which such people can be identified, but mere shared context itself cannot create resonant frequencies that are not there. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-making-friends-as-an-adult.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-...
- nprateem 4y ago
  I'd assumed that those 3 factors were to give you chance to find someone on your wavelength, which IMO is pretty rare, and develop a friendship between you.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  > vulnerability can backfire Yep, seen this a 1000 times, person gets a little too vulnerable, accidentally annoys people around them, gives them fuel for any fallouts that may happen between people. I’ve seen some pretty vicious stuff from people who otherwise aren’t that bad. Probably the biggest thing that shocked me as an adult is how many people still act like teenagers.
blacksoil 4y ago
Thanks for sharing this! I think your explanation really hits the nail. Reminds me of what Pope John Paul II said on a similar topic in a husband-and-wife context (book title: "Love and Responsibility"). He said that all relationship is build on "common ground" (i.e. school project, work project, etc) and this is one of the reasons why the Catholic church mandates a couple to have the willingness and openness to have children as a prerequisite to get married in the church. Children are one of the "common ground" that glue the relationship between the husband and the wife.
- as-j 4y ago
  Plus I suspect the conversation rate of being raised catholic is much much higher than later in life without a religious background. Or in other words making new little catholic children is good for the church.
- deleted 4y ago
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AviationAtom 4y ago
> Not that WAP, this one While I am impressed with his pop culture awareness, I am sad he had to note WAP meant Wireless Access Point
- Stratoscope 4y ago
  That's not sad, it's good writing to define any uncommon acronyms or initialisms. And many people reading would not recognize that one. Of course now I am wondering what the other WAP is. Maybe I don't want to know...
  - AviationAtom 4y ago
    You probably don't. Your life won't be any richer being in the know. In fact, it may be less so.
    - Stratoscope 4y ago
      That is great advice and I will heed it, thanks. Considering that the Fortran Assembly Program (FAP) is on the HN home page right now, it seems particularly relevant! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31553927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31553927
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - the_only_law 4y ago
        Trying to recall now if I first heard of Proton Enhanced Nuclear Induction Spectroscopy through HN or a random PENIS meme.
  - spencerflem 4y ago
    I don't think it's as deep and mysterious as the other commenter made it out to be :p It's just a pop song with some swear words in the title
Tade0 4y ago
> The problem is that we’re not actually that unique as individuals. As much as we’d like to believe in our special nature, we’re pretty much mostly similar to other human beings. I don't fully agree. Most of the population is indeed like that, but truly unique individuals do exist - I had the privilege of meeting a few. > Any skill or attribute you claim makes you unique—”I’m really funny”, “I’m good at shining shoes”, “I’m an attentive lover”—you can always find someone else better than you on that dimension. This reminds me of my friend who told me one time that he's seeing someone, so naturally I asked what she's like. He answered with a set of skills/talents like "perfect pitch" etc., to which I replied "are you dating or are you hiring her?". It's not the skills an attributes that make us unique and interesting, but what emerges from their combinations. Case in point: my SO has pretty bad eyesight, but in exchange a heightened sense of smell - I've seen her detect gas being let out of a stove during a routine checkup two floors down. She is also a kind person and a great listener. What emerges from these traits is (among other things) the ability to tell someone that they should visit a dentist without upsetting them - especially when they're yet not fully aware of their condition.
- edmundsauto 4y ago
  > truly unique individuals do exist - I had the privilege of meeting a few. The law of large numbers suggests this is false. Unless someone has had an experience with exposure to every walk of life, which I don’t believe is possible given 8 billions. Perhaps more accurately: “I have met tens of thousands of people, and have met singletons in that group.” Sorry to be a buzz kill, but my pet peeve is people extrapolating their individual experiences for generalizable things.
  - Tade0 4y ago
    > Sorry to be a buzz kill, but my pet peeve is people extrapolating their individual experiences for generalizable things. No worries, because I think you're wrong and can prove it to you: Say we have 50 different traits that people can have - just a binary yes or no. You meet a person who has 10 of them. Such an individual has already a lower than 1/10e10 probability of having this exact set, and anyone with the same traits and one additional on top of it has 27.5% of that probability. But that's a simplification, because surely there are more than 50 features/activities in the world and even if that's the limit, when you sort them by proficiency for a given individual, then suddenly order matters and you need just 6 of them to be "probably unique". Of course there are plenty of people who are interested only in e.g. travelling, food and movies - popular culture calls these people "basic". But on the flipside there exist humans who have a large set of things that can be said about them. My take is that we're not exploring even a noticeable franction of those combinations and each one of them generates unique, emergent properties.
lr4444lr 4y ago
This is muddled. Aristotle lays it out clearly in the Nichomachean Ethics. There are 3 basic divisions of friendship: those out of utility (i.e. quid pro quo or alliances toward a shared practical end), those out of pleasure (i.e. shared interest to a non practical end), and those out of virtue (i.e. a recognition of shared core moral value that defines your highest goals in life). He expounds upon the details of this at length, and I've found it to be pretty accurate.
- nomilk 4y ago
  > (Aristotle) expounds upon the details of this at length Does there exist a TL;DR of Aristotle's views on this? (e.g. a 10-60 minute version)
  - lr4444lr 4y ago
    Did a bit of sleuthing on YouTube, and it's actually surprisingly hard to find a credentialed professor lecturing specifically on this part of Book VIII in isolation from the rest of the work, but I did stumble on this summary, which to my recollection of the reading, is a little dry pretty decent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucB_X6h_Mi4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucB_X6h_Mi4
  - yesenadam 4y ago
    I imagine you could read the chapter or two on friendship in the book in about that long, there's really not that much text. Aristotle's surviving works are only lecture notes, his actual writings all being lost. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.8.viii.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.8.viii.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.9.ix.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.9.ix.html
- josephg 4y ago
  Interesting! These three ideas roughly line up with a few of the stages in Ken Wilbur’s spiral dynamics: Shared pleasure describes the opportunist. Utility describes the achiever and virtue … well , that more closely describes Robert Kegan’s stage 4 (systematiser). If we play the missing notes of that scale, we would infer you could also be friends with someone out of diplomat energy - they make you feel (socially) safe to be around and appreciated. Or they help you feel grounded in being the better aspects of your personality. I think both of these aspects come out in strong friendships and healthy romantic relationships.
Ozzie_osman 4y ago
If you've been exposed to both Western and Eastern cultures, this is probably something you've seen both sides of. I grew up in Egypt. Family was family, including extended family. You don't choose them, and you can't really distance yourself from them (you'd be crazy to try). You can to some extent choose your friends in school, but that is mostly "shared context"—they are people who probably are from your neighborhood or from the same "social class" (yes, Egypt was/is very class-ist). I live in the US. Everything is very individualistic, and even for those with families, it's very nuclear-family-oriented. Boundaries are well-respected. I'd say when friendships are formed, they're usually more around shared activities, regardless of where someone might be originally from, what their background is, etc. Very different worlds, with pros and cons in each.
- chii 4y ago
  > Very different worlds, with pros and cons in each. Which results in a higher quality of life for a person, all else being equal?
  - Ozzie_osman 4y ago
    It's hard to compare, it's almost like apples to oranges. A big part of it might just be personal preference. From my experience, having a forced, tight-knit social fabric is very frustrating in the day-to-day, but I think it's probably better in the long-term. It's frustrating because you do not get as much privacy, "freedom", and flexibility. There is a lot of drama, as your business is everyone's business and vice-versa. Things you do can bring pride or shame to your family/friends/etc. That said, in the long-term, not being insulated is probably much healthier, and on the bad days / bad times, there are always people there for support (be it emotional, or if you actually need someone to help out financially or otherwise). You're never alone, and it's during the bad times that you appreciate not being alone. Personally, I find that I enjoy the ability to choose the social connections (which ones, and how deep) you make in the US. But, when I think about what I want for my kids... it's definitely the social fabric.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
zuhayeer 4y ago
"I love it when my friends meet each other and they also become friends. When this happens, it weaves more threads into the social fabric around me, making us all more tightly interconnected" Cannot agree more. Very satisfying to tie two distinct worlds together, creating a unique third.
Fricken 4y ago
Shared stressors are how people form deep and lasting bonds. You have to endure an ordeal with someone. The war journalist Sebastien Junger wrote a whole book that emphasizes shared stressors, after spending time embedded with troops manning forward outposts in Afghanistan, who regularly came under fire. The soldiers Junger observed there had little in common before being assigned their missions, but afterwards any one of them would not hesitate to fly across the country at a moment's notice to help out another, if it was needed. My core friend group I've known since I was a teenager, in scouts. I don't have much in common with them anymore, and most are cast to the four corners of the earth, but they're still my friends. My 'social network' of casual acquaintances have been drifting apart the last few years, and I don't really miss them, because shared context is the only thing we've ever really had going together in the first place. A year before COVID, at 42, I got back into rock climbing, and now that I've been on a few climbing trips with some of the guys from the gym, I feel like I'm on my way to forming the first real friendships I've made in decades; and the only thing that mattered ahead of time was their willingness to get out there and get into trouble with me.
- frogpelt 4y ago
  This may be why Stockholm Syndrome is a thing.
- weakfish 4y ago
  +1000 for rock climbing as a social experience
- goodpoint 4y ago
  > Shared stressors are how people form deep and lasting bonds Not so quick! Shared stressors can also make people aggressive and distrustful of each others.
- deleted 4y ago
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photochemsyn 4y ago
I've read a fair number of articles like this about 'networks of friends' and 'mutual aid and support' and I always come away feeling like this is more like a description of a network of military alliances between independent city-states in ancient Greece than what I'd consider normal, healthy friendship or familial relationships. I've seen many human relationships fall apart because people expect too much from the relationships, such as financial support or emotional support or something like that. It's really too easy for such relationships to become somewhat exploitive on one side or the other. When people cross the lines between business relationships and personal relationships, things get messy fast.
mmaunder 4y ago
This is bullshit. “Context” has to be the most vague and abused word in English. The article contradicts itself when they say “ One way to create a shared context is through shared struggle” which is a shared activity. Friendships are formed through shared experiences. The more intense and positive the experience and its outcome, the more durable the friendship. Simple as that. Now go make friends!
- bts327 4y ago
  "Friendships are formed through shared experiences. The more intense and positive the experience and its outcome, the more durable the friendship. Simple as that." Truly.
- weakfish 4y ago
  Maybe try a more charitable phrase than “this is bullshit” ?
  - kortilla 4y ago
    You can put lipstick on a pig, but in the end it’s still… There should be a higher bar for these types of articles that espouse truisms about fundamental human relationships.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      Yes, here's the problem: anyone in the world can write an article about any subject and submit it to HN. In fact the author himself submitted this article to HN. But the author seems to have no particular expertise on the subject matter of the article. The author is a software engineer writing about friendship. And the author's own comments here have just made things worse and more muddled: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31565028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31565028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31564818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31564818 The subject matter, friendship, is of interest to many people, but what obligation do we have to take a non-expert screed seriously? Especially since the article itself seems to be problematic in several ways, at best extremely vague. It's amateur armchair philosophizing.
kevmo314 4y ago
The other property I've found notable is that friendships decay but some people refuse to accept it. For example, I have had some coworkers who have complained about how difficult it is to find new friends and meanwhile they're constantly traveling. Every time I invited them to something, they were never able to make it. Well, good coworker, it's not that it's hard to find friends, it's just that you traded it off for travels. Of course, I ended up becoming better friends with those who showed up.
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  Presumably the type of travel they were doing impacted this too. Travel for leisure can net you plenty of friendships: although the overwhelming majority of people will never remain in contact, you have the potential to meet so many people that if you have some good qualities it's hard not to make some genuine friends. If it's business travel: the poor souls, they need to stop doing so much of that asap.
KelvinAnderson 4y ago
apienx 4y ago
I prefer friendships that form via shared values.
brailsafe 4y ago
Yes, but activities can be a decent jumping off point. I always suggest meeting your co-worker's friends. You'll probably not make real friends with co-workers directly, that's too dependant on the point of contact and physical proximity. But they can introduce you to other that can only become friends with chemistry.
jwpapi 4y ago
I left my hometown and travelled the world and wondered why I never got as close with any of the people I met, compared to the ones from my hometown. This is the reason why. Thanks for the article.
Teletour 4y ago
He will not become friends with his neighbor just because they share some context. He might become friends with him if they can connect on activities they enjoy and then share more context. Talking about a hobby, doing a hobby together and later on experiences like birthday, parties, shared life Situations (birth/kids). It's hard to do more with a person if you don't have a common ground.
m3kw9 4y ago
Always a red flag when someone says x happens because of y. In this case shared interest is just as crucial. Imagine friends who don’t have shared interests, they may not hang out as much and not develop “context”
mgh2 4y ago
Going deeper: What about when shared context engender conflicts? Ex: family members, marriages, coworkers, etc. Values matter and these are hard to instill.

530 points by Kortaggio 4y ago

Adults make a lot of friends via kids, because there’s a combination of shared context and many forced interactions.

I think of that show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic where the whole point is that the friends are all very different.

gringoDan 4y ago

I think this phenomenon is part of the reason it's difficult to form friendships as adults. The shared context that the article mentions requires a lot of time around your circle of people, just "hanging out". It's tough to make that time as an adult with a career, family, etc. This may be why college friendships can be so strong – often a lot of time is spent living and working around friends by default, without needing to schedule it.

hosteur 4y ago
If this is the case then why wouldn’t workplaces create lots of strong friendships? There is a lot of shared context. I’m not sure I buy author’s brushing this away as being because coworkers are trained to replace you. There is lots of competition in school and college also.
- bitcurious 4y ago
  To make friends you need to make mistakes. Litigation culture in the workplace prevents that.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    I don't see this. I've yet to be afraid of being sued by a co-worker and after a couple of decades I can assure you that I've made plenty of mistakes.
    - slothtrop 4y ago
      If you aren't more guarded around co-workers than your friends, maybe you should be.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        Why on earth would a co-worker sue me?
        slothtrop 4y ago
        Suing? They can get you terminated, or hinder your advancement. Anything that can be construed as reflecting badly on you or the company can be used against you.
    - bitcurious 4y ago
      In the edge case, your failed-friend coworker would sue the corporation. This would cost corporation money. The corporation doesn’t care about you having friends, but does care about losing money. As such structures the workplace to minimize the sorts of free expression that creates “shared context” but also creates room for error - discussions of politics, religion, your health, ethnicity, age, etc. - topics that in the best case build trust and curiosity and lead to friendship. My comment isn’t a commentary on people - who are mostly loving, reasonable, and forgiving. It’s a commentary on incentives and the structures those incentives lead to.
  - Sirened 4y ago
    is this a thinly veiled complaint about being hit with sexual harassment complaints? The simple trick to solve this problem is not to sexually harass your friends either
    - nickff 4y ago
      Why did you make two logical leaps just to arrive at an accusation? From the HN Guidelines: " Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. "
      - eyelidlessness 4y ago
        Having backed out of including a reply with my downvote—which I seldom do, but couldn’t find a productive response in me despite some effort—I’m curious what your charitable interpretation is. I went through all of mine, and none of them reflected well on the commenter.
        bitcurious 4y ago
        Bizarre but illustrative that I have to defend myself against a nebulous “uncharitable interpretation.” Are you free (according to corporate policy) to ask your coworkers about religion, health, romance, politics, ethnicity, etc.? I’m comfortable discussing all of the above with my friends, yet each is to some extent restricted in the professional context, either by default or with seniority.
        MrJohz 4y ago
        Not the previous commenter, but yes? I have literally never worked in a place where talking about that has been forbidden. I mean, talking about it offensively is obviously not on the table, but I've discussed literally every single one of those with colleagues before. Is this a cultural thing? I'm from the UK, and I'm working now in Germany. Perhaps things are different in the US?
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  The workplace is more like a relay race than a basketball team. Everyone may share the same project, but they all have different parts to it, and are unlikely to share the same or a sufficiently similar understanding of it.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  It does. A lot of younger knowledge workers (not at all restricted to STEM) make good friends in their first job because of shared context. Eventually increased responsibility through experience means you necessarily open yourself up less and spend more time mentoring, guiding, or otherwise leading.
- Enginerrrd 4y ago
  In my experience, workplaces HAVE created lots of strong friendships in my life. Though, it's interesting, it varies tremendously by workplace culture and the work you're doing. In my jobs doing manual labor or jobs involving a lot of boring hanging out (as a cashier / supervisor / lifeguard) I made lots of friendships. In jobs where it's been primarily knowledge work, I had a lot of good acquaintances, but rarely did that turn into more. I think that being able to talk makes a big difference. It's worth noting though that when I was a lifeguard, I was a long lived employee surrounded by short term employees. The culture was in flux. There are times when I fit in and we became good friends (which remain to this day) and there are times when I didn't fit in or like the people and didn't make any friends. The manual labor jobs produced more lasting friendships than the lifeguarding for whatever reason. Something about actually suffering with others and working toward common aims and being able to talk about stuff produced the best friendships. (I also think that the nature of the work filtered out some of the lower quality people too, and that played a role.)
- bobsmooth 4y ago
  Pretty much every friend I have is a co-worker.
- armchairhacker 4y ago
  I doubt “coworkers trying to replace you” has much of an impact. The bigger issue with some workplaces is that they’re not really close-quarters, because they’re very impersonal. Sure you might be all in the same room a lot, but you’re largely discussing business stuff or working independently. Even corporate “parties” and retreats can be surprisingly professional and unnatural. It’s almost like you don’t really “interact” with the person, you interact with their business facade. If you’re not just talking business with your coworkers, you’re actually talking about life and hanging out and not having a fake professional personality, then you do form friendships. I say this from experience. Though talking about non-professional things and not putting on a facade also makes you vulnerable, so those companies where everyone is competing against each other happen to be the ones where everyone is impersonal.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  Friends happen when you spend time with the same people in different contexts. That’s why most workplace relationships don’t result in friends.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Workplaces do create lots of strong friendships. In the past, they were also one of the biggest sources of romantic relationships. Though that has changed, people are still friends through work.
zamfi 4y ago
Having a family offers a natural avenue for this, though: parents of your kids' friends share a lot of context with you.
goethes_kind 4y ago
The reason friendships between adults are hard is because adults are reluctant to make themselves vulnerable, but opening yourself to others and making yourself vulnerable is exactly what you need to start building a shared history of living (shared context).
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  I just learned this in my mind 30s. So many hollow friendships before.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  It has to be something like this because I add to my list of close friends fairly often - so I have lots of people to lean on (as I discovered when I found myself debilitated by an accident recently). I'm mid thirties and the last close friend who was willing to help me shower when I couldn't is someone I got to know 3 months ago.
- bradlys 4y ago
  YMMV. I found that least in SV - people are so guarded that they’re rarely ever going to be vulnerable even with anyone new they meet. Maybe it’s the crowds I keep meeting but everyone is uncomfortable with even talking about what they want from life - let alone what they struggle with. I think many people here don’t ever open up except with their therapist and parents.
JamesBarney 4y ago
Yeah it's this, just shared time, specifically time hanging out shooting the shit. For instance of all of my coworkers I am paradoxically the closest to are the ones from out of town. I think this is because when they visited they had no other obligations so we ended up shooting the shit a lot. Where co-workers who lived here were always busy with family/life obligations.
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  When working 'busy season' in accounting 50+ hours per week for 4 months, there's not time for friends, and barely time for family. I won't work for that toxic culture again.
danenania 4y ago
A hack that takes advantage of this is to look for activities/events where you spend a lot of sustained time with others. So instead of a meetup once a month, go to a week-long retreat or an all weekend hackathon. Or if there’s someone you’d like to get closer to as a friend, instead of just inviting them to hang out once in awhile, invite them to go on a trip somewhere. Once you reach the tipping point of enough shared time/context by fast-forwarding in this way, it’s easier to then settle into a more ordinary rhythm where you see people periodically but still feel they are real friends.
- tomc1985 4y ago
  If you're into music, festivals are fantastic for this. I was just at such a festival, in an MDMA-fueled reminiscence of just how lucky my friends and I are to have found each other. Through years of simply showing up, gifting my art, and being open to new people, I now have a tight party crew which has supported each other through some of the darkest shit I have ever experienced in my life. Deaths, overdoses, bad trips, poverty, angry neighbors/property owners, whatever... these guys have my back and I have theirs. I may be a thirty-something loner and introvert, but these guys are my bass music battle buddies. Highly recommended.
  - danenania 4y ago
    That's awesome. How long did it take/how many festivals before you started to feel they were real friends you can count on in day-to-day life rather than just being 'festival friends'?
    - tomc1985 4y ago
      The relationships are generally cultivated over time. I have been active in the local dance music underground for all of my adult life, but in this case familiarity was established after showing up at a couple of desert events and hanging out. Later on, I was invited to a house party with some of the same folks where I was accepted into the "family". During all this I would show up at events with my camera, take really good photos, and then give them away, and that got me noticed and made me the unofficial-official photographer of the group. This was several years ago, and the story has advanced considerably since then. edit- To answer your question directly, it took a few years to really feel that these guys were more than just party friends. I think the catalyst here was us, as a group, navigating through shared tragedy. The 'family' was already formed when I joined, and it definitely took a while to feel like I was someone more than just a guy in the periphery. Gifting is big in my scene, and if you want to speed up the process that is probably the best way to start -- art, food, whatever you can provide that other people might want or need. edit2- It just occurred to me that gifting is a great lifehack in general for ingratiating yourself into a new group. The key is that it has to be something they genuinely want. For example, I went to visit a friend of mine in Chile and filled up about half of my luggage with candy, alcohol, and some other things that I knew my friend would appreciate. She was so happy and told all her friends, and in an instant I had a whole group of people to hang out with -- who very specifically told me that they appreciated the gifts -- while I was visiting.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> It's tough to make that time as an adult with a career, family, etc. It's more difficult than college, where everyone is thrown together into close quarters. However, it's not impossible. It's just different and requires different techniques. If you sit back and wait for the contexts to come to you, it's going to be a slow journey. If you go out of your way to create those contexts, it's actually not that difficult to find and make new friends. Hosting events, BBQs, get togethers, and any other social event is an easy way to start it off. This gets massively easier when you have kids, IMO, because you can now also host play dates, invite other families along to activities, meet other parents through daycare or school, and so on. It won't happen if you're staying at home or waiting for people to come to you, of course, but it's not that hard to get out and meet new people and friends-of-friends once you start getting out there and making an effort. Even work can be an easy pivot to new connections if you make an effort. In-person makes this especially easy: Get into the habit of inviting people out to lunch with you once a week and ask if they can think of anyone else to invite along. The bigger the company, the easier it is to be exposed to a lot of new people this way. Again, it won't happen if you're not making an effort, but the amount of effort required is much smaller than it may seem.
- gumby 4y ago
  I became closer friends, and even friends at all, with folks I knew from college years after graduating. As noted in this discussion, we had a lot of shared context that became more meaningful as we grew up.
fleddr 4y ago
I think you're right, you need proximity and significant time together to create and maintain friendships. Which is very hard to organize with adults. Another way to look at it is the shift in priorities. When I was young, all I cared about is friends. I found it more important than school or my parents. I maximized my time with friends. As adult "friend", you're way down the list of priorities, after the job, family, personal health, chores, recovery time...and then there's you, the friend. It's not malice, adults simply have too much shit to manage. Some might be so busy that the last thing they need is a new friend.
- eastbound 4y ago
  Need? They need friends, they don’t have time for any. I went to ICMI (International Conference on Men’s Issues) 2018 and the thing I was most surprised of is, a men help group is often just having a beer together. Fathers have been so busy with raising babies, maintaining the house and performing at career, that when it breaks down, they just need a beer, even with unknown people.
  - ungamedplayer 4y ago
    We're in an odd world where this is the case.
  - fleddr 4y ago
    I get what you're saying and couldn't agree more. My take was a bit more literal, the situation were one already has "enough" friends and is not in search of making new ones. Not to say that one is not open to meeting new people if it happens by chance, instead to say to not being open to turning that into the commitment of a new friendship. I'm saying this mostly for people that lack friends and are looking to make new ones. It's good to understand the sobering reality that some may dodge the chance of a deep new friendship developing. Not because they don't like you, simply because they can't take on the commitment.
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  The priority thing is an interesting one. When I was a kid I was just frequently bored and so were the other kids, so we'd hang out. I'm never bored anymore. I might be depressed and not want to do anything, but that's different from bored. With all the entertainment and things to do at all times, I wonder if current children will have the same experience as we did.
88913527 4y ago
I regret not going to college in the city I ultimately knew I'd end up living in. It was a ton of wasted social capital. I did end up saving money though (college city was cheaper), but it probably wasn't worth the savings. I still do keep in touch with a few people, but it's "annual Zoom call" catchup level of socializing: not enough to fill the day-to-day.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  I regret not going to college because here I am now with near 0 social capital (and very limited with how I can pivot my professional life).
throwaway290 4y ago
IRL I find it exceedingly easy to form connections with others (in my 30s), it doesn't take much time at all. I tend to be in situations where meeting new people happens (coworking spaces, cafes, big cities, going to other cities and staying in places with shared spaces etc). However, 99% of the time I feel disinclined to solidify those connections and create the dependencies the article calls "shared context", because I actively do not find I have much in common with these people. Often I resist accumulating that "shared context" and actively evade and ghost them, other times I don't but later I wish I did. The reason is that by now I have a pretty well-formed worldview, and I know most others have one as well, and I am correspondingly sensitive to finer differences between them. And with meeting people in various IRL communities, the likelihood you are compatible in this way is hovering around zero. *** Generally, I strongly disagree with the article, find it meandering and struggle with the unorthodox meaning it's trying to force onto the phrase "shared context". In fact, in the very next paragraph it gives a stark but much more suitable term for what it wants to say: a web of dependencies. Friendships may form via such a web, but good friendships usually don't. It's a legacy way of sorts, and in our age worth actively avoiding. An example of friendships formed via these webs is often childhood classmates. The only reason you may end up being friends is geographical proximity. There may well be nothing in common between you otherwise. If you let such friendships solidify, they will weigh you down or you will have to endure the psychological pain of ripping yourself out of that web of dependencies. Meeting people in IRL communities is like that, it suffers from people being randomly put together. Accumulating "shared context" (again, web of dependencies) due to geographic proximity alone is the last thing you want to be doing. If you happened to meet someone due to chance IRL encounter, you have to vet them 10x more carefully before letting the web grow, because the chance the encounter is worthwhile is very low. By contrast, shared context (the actual thing, not the meaning forced by the article) is easy to come by thanks to the Web, and there're plenty of people who have compatible worldviews yet are different enough to be interesting to engage with. All you need is try and get a feel for all the various ways of signaling. If you are sorta good at something like art or engineering (yes, this can be hard to know for sure), be a bit brave to go more public with it through social channels, etc. Establishing IRL acquaintance later with casual meetups is easy thanks to relaxing travel restrictions.

jdkee 4y ago

Proximity, unplanned interactions and privacy are three key components or forming new friendships. See https://www.businessinsider.com/things-that-help-people-make-new-friends-2014-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/things-that-help-people-make...

ghostly_s 4y ago
Thanks, some actual evidence-based claims instead if this pointless unsupported conjecture.

tarr11 4y ago

I'm having trouble understanding what the author means by "context" in this article. It seems to mean "your location within your network of people"?

Kortaggio 4y ago
Hi! Author here. I'll admit I struggled to find a more precise word than "context". What I mean is that a friendship is not the 1:1 interaction you have with your friend, but that friend's omni-directional interaction with every other friend. Their location within a network is one way of putting it. In other words, their entanglements in your web of mutual commitments, shared history, and collective responsibility.
prawn 4y ago
Maybe think of it like a shared challenge. You might be going through parenting together, or starting a business or some path through life that you have in common.

rozim 4y ago

Well, a variation on this is what Nobel prize winner Bob Dylan says in Brownsville Girl, that shared suffering is important: "Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than people who are most content.” Maybe suffering here can be interpreted as shared challenges.

qgin 4y ago

On average, people need about 100 hours of interaction to feel a friendship connection. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0265407518761225 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0265407518761225

iLoveOncall 4y ago
Given the methodology of the study I wouldn't trust it one bit.
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  I've felt (and still have) friendships to this day that were formed in a single conversation over a shared university class and then a bit after. I've tried to make other friendships work by maximising time spent with someone, and it basically never worked. Highly frustrating if you're the systematising type.

baxtr 4y ago

I think he's onto something. Then again, why aren't we still friends with everyone we spent a lot of time with when we were in elementary school? I fear a critical component is missing.

Pamar 4y ago
Not only that but... how many of us have brothers and sisters... but are not friends with them?
- em-bee 4y ago
  you can spend a decade living with someone without any shared struggles. relationships can have the same problem. they love each other, but they never had to actually rely on each other. if that weren't so there would not be any divorces.
- Volrath89 4y ago
  True. But it's kind of sad if you think about it. Brothers and sisters will be there forever until death. Unlike friends or relationships which can be temporary. From this year on, I am at least trying to get closer to my sister even if we have not been "friends" before.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  I have a surprisingly decent relationship with most of y nuclear family with one exception, most of my brothers live hundreds of thousands of miles away from each other. I’m almost certain at this point that in order to maintain a good relationship with my family distance is required. When my parents moved last, they ended up close to family that they were really close to and far away from family they had feuded with in the past. By the time I visited last year, they relationship with the family they were close to had severely degraded, and all the family they used to fight with were friendly.
layer8 4y ago
Because the context changed and lastingly stopped being a shared one?

lapcat 4y ago

I found this article strange, because the author seemed to be reversing cause and effect. Isn't "shared context" — trust, loyalty, love, belonging, safety — the result of friendship rather than the cause of friendship? How can you trust and be loyal to someone you just met? "We can’t help but desperately compete in this unwinnable game of having the best collection of attributes to show off." I don't get it, because friends don't need each other to be the best person in the world at any given thing. Having things in common seems to be enough, no? Does anyone need to be "unique", a special snowflake in the world? In some sense friends are interchangeable, in that it's a total accident of circumstances which few of the billions of people on Earth you happen to hang out with. But I'm not clear on why "global uniqueness" is necessary for friendship. That seems to be an impossible standard, and it's not the basis of any friendship I've ever had. "In my early attempts to make friends, I tried inviting people with shared interests to activities like sailing or grabbing brunch". I think the missing ingredient here is simply time. It's hard to become friends in just a few hours. [Edit:] "One way to create a shared context is through shared struggle. This is why many organizations implement ritualized hazing to initiate new members, but the important thing is not the hazing, it’s the sense that you are working together with your fellow humans to achieve a super-human goal." The super-human goal of getting your butt paddled by a frat boy? No, hazing is just a perverse power play, nothing more. They do hazing because they can, and get a kick out of it.

Barrin92 4y ago
>How can you trust and be loyal to someone you just met? Duty. that's what the military often is like and my experiences with military friendships overlap a lot with the idea that long lasting friendships are build around context, although I think 'shared sense of purpose' describes it somewhat better. Starting a business together or going through disease or really anything where people have real skin in the game and there's something at stake is where people can form deep, meaningful bonds quickly.
- lapcat 4y ago
  Are you close friends with everyone you served with, though? Isn't there someone in the military you didn't like? ;-) AFAICT the formula for friendship is pretty simple: time + shared interests + personality/chemistry. The military is a good way to spend a lot of time together, and maybe a shared interest too.

civilized 4y ago

Shared context is necessary but I think shared perspectives and values are what ultimately matter. I have shared context with a lot of people at work but I'm only good friends with one or two. Very relatedly, my wife is my best friend, and I tend to become friends with people who are like her. (ugh, Wife Guy)

em-bee 4y ago
how close are you working with others? a small team that goes through developing and releasing a product will develop closer relationships than individuals who work by themselves just picking off items from the big task list
- bradlys 4y ago
  I think his point is true even in smaller teams and environments. Unless you’re forced to be together like in the military - I don’t see people relating to one another as soon as that context breaks apart. The shared moral fibers are important. The people I talk to frequently outside of work after having left are people I share some deeper values with. Everyone else seems to not share the same values. (Not surprising either because many are not from a similar background or have gone through what my friends and I have experienced) I think shared values is paramount to friendships developing outside the workplace/collaborative environment. I’ve worked with hundreds of people professionally and through volunteering - very few ever translated because both of these things I volunteer for and work for attract very specific types of people who I do not get along with. I just happen to do both of these things - and my type of values and personality are more spread evenly in society.
  - em-bee 4y ago
    well of course there is a spectrum. not every team becomes a group of close-knit friends. it's just a bit more likely that friendships grow out of a team because there are more opportunities for a shared experience.

PKop 4y ago

Made a comment about this on another thread [0]: "True friendship comes mostly from shared struggle. Think sports teams, military, small teams at work, even childhood friends and the experience growing up. It is hard to establish anything meaningful of a connection with casual interactions, and expecting to just "party/play hard" with people you don't really know is putting the cart before the horse. First you must work hard together. I'd suggest joining a Crossfit gym or similar. I've had great success meeting people within the context of group workouts. It has regular class schedules, and provides a way to ease into social interactions at your own pace as you'll be around the same people regularly. Often this leads to opportunities to do things together outside of the classes. Additionally, there are likely individuals with similar disinterest in the common activities you mentioned in you CS classes. Finding opportunities to work with someone on class assignments, studying or projects together would fall in the "shared struggle" category." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28969047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28969047

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vishnugupta 4y ago
This has exactly been my observation and experience. There’s a poignant cartoon where two animals are on a long journey. One asks the other, “Is it about the journey or destination”. It gets a response “it’s about the company”. Bonds developed through shared struggles tend to be stronger. Even if that struggle is artificial one like going on a road bike trip with random strangers. Even parents bonding over is about their struggles of raising children.
the_only_law 4y ago
> I'd suggest joining a Crossfit gym or similar. Isn’t there a popular joke about these being cult-ish?

lordnacho 4y ago

Isn't activity just a part of context? Kick-about in the park -> simple activity, not many connections formed Weekly football team -> training, trips, club events -> more connections formed From my life the easiest connections are the ones where you're stuck together for a long time, eg education. You do pretty much everything together for years, you end up visiting each other's parents, you know each other's siblings, friends for life. In fact it's a reasonable test of how good friends you are with someone, whether you visited their house, know their family, know their friends, and know their CV. Work is a little bit different. People are coming and going, there's a hierarchy as well, and also people are busy and have already got a friend group. That being said there's still the "always together" element so plenty of opportunity. A more recent one is the "other parents in your kid's year". You end up hanging around your kid's friends parents a fair bit, and there's a fair chance they are similar to you. Which brings me to friend templates... Meet a few people and like the article says, you will find many have similar attributes. Often you end up meeting people who have basically had parallel lives to yourself, in two ways: - They literally have the same friends as you. I have this guy I went to school with briefly, who then turns up in all my friends' stories about what they got up to over the years, without me actually meeting him. Like a comedy show, he's just left when I arrive. I even had a random guy on an international flight tell me he was going to go see this guy, and I identified it because I knew so much about him. Anyway this is probably something that's happened to a fair few people, but they end up seeing the guy in real life and becoming friends. - They have done the same things as you, unconnected. They went to your uni, or studied what you studied. They work in your line of work. When you were kids, you had the same interests. They're from your city. These kinds of people are great seeds for relationships, but there's lots of them, and not all of them are watered.

productceo 4y ago

When the writer says friendships, I believe the writer means communities, such as community of place.

shaman1 4y ago

Congrats to the author, a good observation. I was just talking with one of my friends who recently became a father about how quickly new moms bond and form friendships due to the common context. But similar interests can make the bond stronger and deeper I'd argue.

SnowHill9902 4y ago

Cf. propinquity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propinquity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propinquity

pessimizer 4y ago

I had this realization somewhere around turning 30. I had been a touring musician in my teens and early twenties, and those were the friendships I had. I realized at one point that I had selected friends based on the kinds of music that they liked and whether I had partied with them, and that those were dumb criteria for friends. I vowed from then on I would choose who to hang out with based on how kind, thoughtful, and trustworthy they were, and that I would stop having endless worthless conversations about bands and other products. I could just enjoy the stuff that I was into without making it into a identity. Never looked back.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

> One way to create a shared context is through shared struggle. Can't agree with this enough. Nearly all of my best friendships have been people I've met through a shared goal that required a ton of work (e.g. some intensive artistic training as a youth, early startup jobs, etc.) I always realize how lucky I am to have had some of these intense "struggles" pretty early on in my life, as I've met people who didn't have that opportunity and I realize how my network of real friendships has greatly benefited from that.

iLoveOncall 4y ago

What I got out of this article is that some psychos share their wifi passwords with strangers.

quickthrower2 4y ago
They assumed he was a engineer being social, not a social engineer.

ripvanwinkle 4y ago

I think the article is spot on about friendships forming from shared context. However, shared activities are often the precursor to shared context - so joining a swim team or a bike team or any group activity is still a good idea. Doing shared activities with some regularity is one way to build shared context and ultimately friendship.

going_ham 4y ago

I really can't understand the idea of friendship. Throughout my life, I never had the opportunity to foster a meaningful friendly relationship (one with trust, loyalty, support etc.) I found it to be apparent when people toss over the things I do. I have a lot of acquaintances and friends but very few close friends. Other than that, I feel like most people only talk with me when they absolutely need something. Otherwise, I am always the last person to be called on anything. > Becoming disentangled from your web of mutual commitments, shared history, and collective responsibility is to be rendered into a transaction, a slave. When author compared that having this "disentangled" social web is like being enslaved to business, I couldn't relate it. Isn't it completely normal? I don't want to idolize friendship, but everything will end eventually. I have experienced this throughout multiple phases of my life. No one of the so called friends made effort to contact me once I disappeared from social media. Only my close friends remained because I put the effort to do so. When I stopped putting effort, even these relationship got eroded (One can't clap with a single hand). This was the moment I realized that there is no such thing as friendship which author described. Life is what you give meaning to. It's nice that author is there to foster social meaning. For some reason the post felt like it's trying to create void that people without close friends are missing things from life. When I came in peace that I can't rely on any other person but myself, I found peace. Life has multiple dimensions. No one has to live in one way. It's better to find our own ways and be happy with it. PS: Just a minor opinion! Do not take it personally.

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em-bee 4y ago
did your friendship actually end or did you just loose sight of each other? how would you feel if that person contacted you now? i have friends that i consider close, that i only talk to once a year or even much longet. and not so close friends that i talk to every day. it is indeed the shared context, similar personal experiences and trust that connect us. the friendship doesn't stop just because we stop talking, it does stop however if something happens that breaks the trust between us and we have no opportunity to regain that trust by creating more shared context

wenc 4y ago

The NYTimes has an article "Why it is hard to make friends over 30" that gets reposted almost every year [1]. There's a quote about friendship conditions: "As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other, said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This is why so many people meet their lifelong friends in college, she added." But it's worthwhile noting that these conditions are simply that: conditions. Their existence do not inexorably lead to friendships. They are necessary but insufficient conditions. I've been in many situations where all 3 were present but I didn't feel a simpatico with the other person. I've taken weekend trips with people whom I never wanted to interact with again because I did not like what I saw on the trip (vulnerability can backfire -- if someone is vulnerable about how evil they are, I'm not likely to appreciate that). I don't really keep in touch with most college friends either. On the other hand, there's something that does lead to fast and lasting friendships for me: it's that indescribable feeling when someone is on the same "wavelength". It's a collocation of a bunch of things: the way they view the world (even if they are of a different political stripe), a shared sense of humor, and something you admire about them. Shared context definitely creates the conditions under which such people can be identified, but mere shared context itself cannot create resonant frequencies that are not there. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-making-friends-as-an-adult.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-...

nprateem 4y ago
I'd assumed that those 3 factors were to give you chance to find someone on your wavelength, which IMO is pretty rare, and develop a friendship between you.
the_only_law 4y ago
> vulnerability can backfire Yep, seen this a 1000 times, person gets a little too vulnerable, accidentally annoys people around them, gives them fuel for any fallouts that may happen between people. I’ve seen some pretty vicious stuff from people who otherwise aren’t that bad. Probably the biggest thing that shocked me as an adult is how many people still act like teenagers.

blacksoil 4y ago

Thanks for sharing this! I think your explanation really hits the nail. Reminds me of what Pope John Paul II said on a similar topic in a husband-and-wife context (book title: "Love and Responsibility"). He said that all relationship is build on "common ground" (i.e. school project, work project, etc) and this is one of the reasons why the Catholic church mandates a couple to have the willingness and openness to have children as a prerequisite to get married in the church. Children are one of the "common ground" that glue the relationship between the husband and the wife.

as-j 4y ago
Plus I suspect the conversation rate of being raised catholic is much much higher than later in life without a religious background. Or in other words making new little catholic children is good for the church.
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AviationAtom 4y ago

> Not that WAP, this one While I am impressed with his pop culture awareness, I am sad he had to note WAP meant Wireless Access Point

Stratoscope 4y ago
That's not sad, it's good writing to define any uncommon acronyms or initialisms. And many people reading would not recognize that one. Of course now I am wondering what the other WAP is. Maybe I don't want to know...
- AviationAtom 4y ago
  You probably don't. Your life won't be any richer being in the know. In fact, it may be less so.
  - Stratoscope 4y ago
    That is great advice and I will heed it, thanks. Considering that the Fortran Assembly Program (FAP) is on the HN home page right now, it seems particularly relevant! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31553927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31553927
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    - the_only_law 4y ago
      Trying to recall now if I first heard of Proton Enhanced Nuclear Induction Spectroscopy through HN or a random PENIS meme.
- spencerflem 4y ago
  I don't think it's as deep and mysterious as the other commenter made it out to be :p It's just a pop song with some swear words in the title

Tade0 4y ago

> The problem is that we’re not actually that unique as individuals. As much as we’d like to believe in our special nature, we’re pretty much mostly similar to other human beings. I don't fully agree. Most of the population is indeed like that, but truly unique individuals do exist - I had the privilege of meeting a few. > Any skill or attribute you claim makes you unique—”I’m really funny”, “I’m good at shining shoes”, “I’m an attentive lover”—you can always find someone else better than you on that dimension. This reminds me of my friend who told me one time that he's seeing someone, so naturally I asked what she's like. He answered with a set of skills/talents like "perfect pitch" etc., to which I replied "are you dating or are you hiring her?". It's not the skills an attributes that make us unique and interesting, but what emerges from their combinations. Case in point: my SO has pretty bad eyesight, but in exchange a heightened sense of smell - I've seen her detect gas being let out of a stove during a routine checkup two floors down. She is also a kind person and a great listener. What emerges from these traits is (among other things) the ability to tell someone that they should visit a dentist without upsetting them - especially when they're yet not fully aware of their condition.

edmundsauto 4y ago
> truly unique individuals do exist - I had the privilege of meeting a few. The law of large numbers suggests this is false. Unless someone has had an experience with exposure to every walk of life, which I don’t believe is possible given 8 billions. Perhaps more accurately: “I have met tens of thousands of people, and have met singletons in that group.” Sorry to be a buzz kill, but my pet peeve is people extrapolating their individual experiences for generalizable things.
- Tade0 4y ago
  > Sorry to be a buzz kill, but my pet peeve is people extrapolating their individual experiences for generalizable things. No worries, because I think you're wrong and can prove it to you: Say we have 50 different traits that people can have - just a binary yes or no. You meet a person who has 10 of them. Such an individual has already a lower than 1/10e10 probability of having this exact set, and anyone with the same traits and one additional on top of it has 27.5% of that probability. But that's a simplification, because surely there are more than 50 features/activities in the world and even if that's the limit, when you sort them by proficiency for a given individual, then suddenly order matters and you need just 6 of them to be "probably unique". Of course there are plenty of people who are interested only in e.g. travelling, food and movies - popular culture calls these people "basic". But on the flipside there exist humans who have a large set of things that can be said about them. My take is that we're not exploring even a noticeable franction of those combinations and each one of them generates unique, emergent properties.

lr4444lr 4y ago

This is muddled. Aristotle lays it out clearly in the Nichomachean Ethics. There are 3 basic divisions of friendship: those out of utility (i.e. quid pro quo or alliances toward a shared practical end), those out of pleasure (i.e. shared interest to a non practical end), and those out of virtue (i.e. a recognition of shared core moral value that defines your highest goals in life). He expounds upon the details of this at length, and I've found it to be pretty accurate.

nomilk 4y ago
> (Aristotle) expounds upon the details of this at length Does there exist a TL;DR of Aristotle's views on this? (e.g. a 10-60 minute version)
- lr4444lr 4y ago
  Did a bit of sleuthing on YouTube, and it's actually surprisingly hard to find a credentialed professor lecturing specifically on this part of Book VIII in isolation from the rest of the work, but I did stumble on this summary, which to my recollection of the reading, is a little dry pretty decent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucB_X6h_Mi4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucB_X6h_Mi4
- yesenadam 4y ago
  I imagine you could read the chapter or two on friendship in the book in about that long, there's really not that much text. Aristotle's surviving works are only lecture notes, his actual writings all being lost. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.8.viii.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.8.viii.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.9.ix.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.9.ix.html
josephg 4y ago
Interesting! These three ideas roughly line up with a few of the stages in Ken Wilbur’s spiral dynamics: Shared pleasure describes the opportunist. Utility describes the achiever and virtue … well , that more closely describes Robert Kegan’s stage 4 (systematiser). If we play the missing notes of that scale, we would infer you could also be friends with someone out of diplomat energy - they make you feel (socially) safe to be around and appreciated. Or they help you feel grounded in being the better aspects of your personality. I think both of these aspects come out in strong friendships and healthy romantic relationships.

Ozzie_osman 4y ago

If you've been exposed to both Western and Eastern cultures, this is probably something you've seen both sides of. I grew up in Egypt. Family was family, including extended family. You don't choose them, and you can't really distance yourself from them (you'd be crazy to try). You can to some extent choose your friends in school, but that is mostly "shared context"—they are people who probably are from your neighborhood or from the same "social class" (yes, Egypt was/is very class-ist). I live in the US. Everything is very individualistic, and even for those with families, it's very nuclear-family-oriented. Boundaries are well-respected. I'd say when friendships are formed, they're usually more around shared activities, regardless of where someone might be originally from, what their background is, etc. Very different worlds, with pros and cons in each.

chii 4y ago
> Very different worlds, with pros and cons in each. Which results in a higher quality of life for a person, all else being equal?
- Ozzie_osman 4y ago
  It's hard to compare, it's almost like apples to oranges. A big part of it might just be personal preference. From my experience, having a forced, tight-knit social fabric is very frustrating in the day-to-day, but I think it's probably better in the long-term. It's frustrating because you do not get as much privacy, "freedom", and flexibility. There is a lot of drama, as your business is everyone's business and vice-versa. Things you do can bring pride or shame to your family/friends/etc. That said, in the long-term, not being insulated is probably much healthier, and on the bad days / bad times, there are always people there for support (be it emotional, or if you actually need someone to help out financially or otherwise). You're never alone, and it's during the bad times that you appreciate not being alone. Personally, I find that I enjoy the ability to choose the social connections (which ones, and how deep) you make in the US. But, when I think about what I want for my kids... it's definitely the social fabric.
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zuhayeer 4y ago

"I love it when my friends meet each other and they also become friends. When this happens, it weaves more threads into the social fabric around me, making us all more tightly interconnected" Cannot agree more. Very satisfying to tie two distinct worlds together, creating a unique third.

Fricken 4y ago

Shared stressors are how people form deep and lasting bonds. You have to endure an ordeal with someone. The war journalist Sebastien Junger wrote a whole book that emphasizes shared stressors, after spending time embedded with troops manning forward outposts in Afghanistan, who regularly came under fire. The soldiers Junger observed there had little in common before being assigned their missions, but afterwards any one of them would not hesitate to fly across the country at a moment's notice to help out another, if it was needed. My core friend group I've known since I was a teenager, in scouts. I don't have much in common with them anymore, and most are cast to the four corners of the earth, but they're still my friends. My 'social network' of casual acquaintances have been drifting apart the last few years, and I don't really miss them, because shared context is the only thing we've ever really had going together in the first place. A year before COVID, at 42, I got back into rock climbing, and now that I've been on a few climbing trips with some of the guys from the gym, I feel like I'm on my way to forming the first real friendships I've made in decades; and the only thing that mattered ahead of time was their willingness to get out there and get into trouble with me.

frogpelt 4y ago
This may be why Stockholm Syndrome is a thing.
weakfish 4y ago
+1000 for rock climbing as a social experience
goodpoint 4y ago
> Shared stressors are how people form deep and lasting bonds Not so quick! Shared stressors can also make people aggressive and distrustful of each others.
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photochemsyn 4y ago

I've read a fair number of articles like this about 'networks of friends' and 'mutual aid and support' and I always come away feeling like this is more like a description of a network of military alliances between independent city-states in ancient Greece than what I'd consider normal, healthy friendship or familial relationships. I've seen many human relationships fall apart because people expect too much from the relationships, such as financial support or emotional support or something like that. It's really too easy for such relationships to become somewhat exploitive on one side or the other. When people cross the lines between business relationships and personal relationships, things get messy fast.

mmaunder 4y ago

This is bullshit. “Context” has to be the most vague and abused word in English. The article contradicts itself when they say “ One way to create a shared context is through shared struggle” which is a shared activity. Friendships are formed through shared experiences. The more intense and positive the experience and its outcome, the more durable the friendship. Simple as that. Now go make friends!

bts327 4y ago
"Friendships are formed through shared experiences. The more intense and positive the experience and its outcome, the more durable the friendship. Simple as that." Truly.
weakfish 4y ago
Maybe try a more charitable phrase than “this is bullshit” ?
- kortilla 4y ago
  You can put lipstick on a pig, but in the end it’s still… There should be a higher bar for these types of articles that espouse truisms about fundamental human relationships.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    Yes, here's the problem: anyone in the world can write an article about any subject and submit it to HN. In fact the author himself submitted this article to HN. But the author seems to have no particular expertise on the subject matter of the article. The author is a software engineer writing about friendship. And the author's own comments here have just made things worse and more muddled: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31565028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31565028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31564818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31564818 The subject matter, friendship, is of interest to many people, but what obligation do we have to take a non-expert screed seriously? Especially since the article itself seems to be problematic in several ways, at best extremely vague. It's amateur armchair philosophizing.

kevmo314 4y ago

The other property I've found notable is that friendships decay but some people refuse to accept it. For example, I have had some coworkers who have complained about how difficult it is to find new friends and meanwhile they're constantly traveling. Every time I invited them to something, they were never able to make it. Well, good coworker, it's not that it's hard to find friends, it's just that you traded it off for travels. Of course, I ended up becoming better friends with those who showed up.

bigDinosaur 4y ago
Presumably the type of travel they were doing impacted this too. Travel for leisure can net you plenty of friendships: although the overwhelming majority of people will never remain in contact, you have the potential to meet so many people that if you have some good qualities it's hard not to make some genuine friends. If it's business travel: the poor souls, they need to stop doing so much of that asap.

KelvinAnderson 4y ago

apienx 4y ago

I prefer friendships that form via shared values.

brailsafe 4y ago

Yes, but activities can be a decent jumping off point. I always suggest meeting your co-worker's friends. You'll probably not make real friends with co-workers directly, that's too dependant on the point of contact and physical proximity. But they can introduce you to other that can only become friends with chemistry.

jwpapi 4y ago

I left my hometown and travelled the world and wondered why I never got as close with any of the people I met, compared to the ones from my hometown. This is the reason why. Thanks for the article.

Teletour 4y ago

He will not become friends with his neighbor just because they share some context. He might become friends with him if they can connect on activities they enjoy and then share more context. Talking about a hobby, doing a hobby together and later on experiences like birthday, parties, shared life Situations (birth/kids). It's hard to do more with a person if you don't have a common ground.

m3kw9 4y ago

Always a red flag when someone says x happens because of y. In this case shared interest is just as crucial. Imagine friends who don’t have shared interests, they may not hang out as much and not develop “context”

mgh2 4y ago

Going deeper: What about when shared context engender conflicts? Ex: family members, marriages, coworkers, etc. Values matter and these are hard to instill.