> I guess it's because the friendship going badly will have a detrimental impact at work and you have to interact with these people every day whether you want t

> I guess it's because the friendship going badly will have a detrimental impact at work and you have to interact with these people every day whether you want to or not. The book Impro characterizes friendship as a relationship in which one can freely and safely play "status games" without any actual stakes or chance of status-shifts. If that's true, then it's definitely more challenging to have a "real" friendship with a co-worker. [EDIT] > EDIT: after thinking on it a little bit, I can't remember my parents nor friend's parents having friendships either. That makes me second-guess the technological influences on loneliness. I'm sure technology is making it worse, but I don't think we can point at it and say "this is the cause" because the loneliness epidemic seems to have started even before my generation. Bowling Alone[1] was published in 2000 and is an expansion of a 1995 essay, which makes it about 27 years old now. It was not observing a new trend, but one that had been going on for decades, when it was published. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone