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This is cheapening and commodifying a lot of perfectly good friendships. If you hang out with people and the primary reason is that you enjoy each other's compa

by strken 4y ago

This is cheapening and commodifying a lot of perfectly good friendships. If you hang out with people and the primary reason is that you enjoy each other's company, then you're friends. Dividing the world into "true" "deep" "real" friends implies that the guy you get dinner with once every few months is somehow false, when he's still a real friend, just a slightly more distant one. The SF social playbook is exhausting because some of the people literally are false, and hanging out with you primarily for financial gain but pretending they're not. Some are also acquaintances who're just there because of work, but openly acknowledge it. Those don't invalidate real but distant friendships.

kenhwang 4y ago
Foulweather friends, fairweather friends, and acquaintances; and it's often not reciprocated. Foulweather friends are what people usually refer to as "real" friends. These are the ones that can be depended upon to act like a friend regardless of what's going on. This is more a guide for fairweather friends. Difference between a fairweather friend and an acquaintance really just comes down to how much you enjoy their company. Yes, there's still plenty of value offered by someone who's only a fairweather friend. But what stresses and ruins friendships are fairweather friends that pretend to be foulweather friends. Or a mismatch in expectations/understanding. I do think it's healthy to understand your relationships and friendships, it doesn't make one type of friendship more "real" than another, but it does help prioritize where you should probably spend emotional/social resources.
- strken 4y ago
  I've always used "fairweather friend" to describe someone who shirks their responsibilities during tough times. What I'm describing is someone who's not expected to make huge sacrifices for you in the first place: either they're a new friend you're still getting to know, they're an old one you're no longer as close with, or there are other circumstances. I think "distant friend" is a better term for that because it acknowledges the continuum of friendship isn't a binary value. Some are closer, some are further. People move back and forward along it as you and they age and change.
  - kenhwang 4y ago
    Fairweather really doesn't have the best connotation, but yes it's a spectrum like the weather. They're friends that are easy to maintain to upkeep without much commitment or effort. But whether it's by your choice or theirs, the result is the same: they won't be around when it's tough. But if it's by your choice, you'd never know if you didn't ask, sometimes people exceed expectations. In my experience, it doesn't hurt to ask for the favor; people are rarely offended when you consider them a closer friend than they are as.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > This is more a guide for fairweather friends. "Fairweather friends" are not friends. They're "close acquaintances" at best.
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
In France, if you use "ami" ("friend"), it implies intimacy. What americans call friends are what we call "potes", which are "buddies". The word "friend" is tossed around so easily in the US culture. "This is my very good friend Eric" can mean you know him from work. But it hasn't always been like that, "friend" use to mean something more. I feel like it's not specific to "friend", but a general growing trend in America to use superlatives for everything. Like "I ate the most amazing fries yesterday". This removes all meaning, all nuances, from the language. But it does a lot of virtue signaling and sells better. And it makes sense, because Frenchmen are terrible sellers, and Americans are good ones. Unfortunately it also mean I now have an automatic filter pass on American speech to tone it down.
- pull_my_finger 4y ago
  > This removes all meaning, all nuances, from the language. But it does a lot of virtue signaling and sells better. What would you expect from a culture where "literally" is so (incorrectly) overused it now usually means the exact opposite[1] [1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > The word "friend" is tossed around so easily in the US culture. "This is my very good friend Eric" can mean you know him from work. I really hate this as well. It's like people have forgotten that "acquaintances" and "friends" are two different things, and just use "friend" to cover both. I think it cheapens what "friend" really means.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  It's not just the word friend, but also the word love. One my favorite intro's to a movie was Up. The amazing part is how deeply it communicated emotions without using any words. Talk is cheap, characters in movies and shows will start saying they love each other after having met a week or two before. That's an L word, but it aint love.
mihaic 4y ago
It's a bit ironic that I find the "many friends" approach to cheapen the deeper connections I have with only a handful of people. In the end, I think these are different kinds of socialization, and these all work when both parties are on the same page. To me, problems seem to mainly come from people on average decreasing their understanding of other systems of value.
s17n 4y ago
I would say the "true" friends are the ones that you would hang out with even if you didn't enjoy it. I'm not saying there's anything cheap or false about other friendships! The "transaction" is generally something along the lines of "interesting thoughts in exchange for interesting thoughts" or "invitations to cool parties in exchange for being a fun party guest". It's just different from true friendship, where you don't care anymore what the other person has to offer you.

by strken 4y ago

kenhwang 4y ago

Foulweather friends, fairweather friends, and acquaintances; and it's often not reciprocated. Foulweather friends are what people usually refer to as "real" friends. These are the ones that can be depended upon to act like a friend regardless of what's going on. This is more a guide for fairweather friends. Difference between a fairweather friend and an acquaintance really just comes down to how much you enjoy their company. Yes, there's still plenty of value offered by someone who's only a fairweather friend. But what stresses and ruins friendships are fairweather friends that pretend to be foulweather friends. Or a mismatch in expectations/understanding. I do think it's healthy to understand your relationships and friendships, it doesn't make one type of friendship more "real" than another, but it does help prioritize where you should probably spend emotional/social resources.

strken 4y ago
I've always used "fairweather friend" to describe someone who shirks their responsibilities during tough times. What I'm describing is someone who's not expected to make huge sacrifices for you in the first place: either they're a new friend you're still getting to know, they're an old one you're no longer as close with, or there are other circumstances. I think "distant friend" is a better term for that because it acknowledges the continuum of friendship isn't a binary value. Some are closer, some are further. People move back and forward along it as you and they age and change.
- kenhwang 4y ago
  Fairweather really doesn't have the best connotation, but yes it's a spectrum like the weather. They're friends that are easy to maintain to upkeep without much commitment or effort. But whether it's by your choice or theirs, the result is the same: they won't be around when it's tough. But if it's by your choice, you'd never know if you didn't ask, sometimes people exceed expectations. In my experience, it doesn't hurt to ask for the favor; people are rarely offended when you consider them a closer friend than they are as.
JohnFen 4y ago
> This is more a guide for fairweather friends. "Fairweather friends" are not friends. They're "close acquaintances" at best.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

In France, if you use "ami" ("friend"), it implies intimacy. What americans call friends are what we call "potes", which are "buddies". The word "friend" is tossed around so easily in the US culture. "This is my very good friend Eric" can mean you know him from work. But it hasn't always been like that, "friend" use to mean something more. I feel like it's not specific to "friend", but a general growing trend in America to use superlatives for everything. Like "I ate the most amazing fries yesterday". This removes all meaning, all nuances, from the language. But it does a lot of virtue signaling and sells better. And it makes sense, because Frenchmen are terrible sellers, and Americans are good ones. Unfortunately it also mean I now have an automatic filter pass on American speech to tone it down.

pull_my_finger 4y ago
> This removes all meaning, all nuances, from the language. But it does a lot of virtue signaling and sells better. What would you expect from a culture where "literally" is so (incorrectly) overused it now usually means the exact opposite[1] [1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally
JohnFen 4y ago
> The word "friend" is tossed around so easily in the US culture. "This is my very good friend Eric" can mean you know him from work. I really hate this as well. It's like people have forgotten that "acquaintances" and "friends" are two different things, and just use "friend" to cover both. I think it cheapens what "friend" really means.
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
It's not just the word friend, but also the word love. One my favorite intro's to a movie was Up. The amazing part is how deeply it communicated emotions without using any words. Talk is cheap, characters in movies and shows will start saying they love each other after having met a week or two before. That's an L word, but it aint love.

mihaic 4y ago

It's a bit ironic that I find the "many friends" approach to cheapen the deeper connections I have with only a handful of people. In the end, I think these are different kinds of socialization, and these all work when both parties are on the same page. To me, problems seem to mainly come from people on average decreasing their understanding of other systems of value.

s17n 4y ago

I would say the "true" friends are the ones that you would hang out with even if you didn't enjoy it. I'm not saying there's anything cheap or false about other friendships! The "transaction" is generally something along the lines of "interesting thoughts in exchange for interesting thoughts" or "invitations to cool parties in exchange for being a fun party guest". It's just different from true friendship, where you don't care anymore what the other person has to offer you.