23 ms·

Five Kinds of Friends (2022)

219 points by jger15 3y ago

A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
Just to say: Good article. Randal Collins is one of the most insightful men alive, and it's a damn shame he isn't more widely known.
MightyBuzzard 3y ago
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stblack 3y ago
Aristotle outlined two kinds of friendships: 1. Accidental friendships 2. Friendships of the highest order He separated Accidental friendships into two types: * friendship of utility * friendships of pleasure So three kinds of friends, according to Aristotle.
- farrarstan 3y ago
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- noduerme 3y ago
  It only took us 2300 years to add another kind that combines utility and pleasure, but isn't accidental: friends with benefits.
  - ev7 3y ago
    But are friends with benefits friends?
    - swagempire 3y ago
      Are your regular friends really friends...
      - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
        Only if they click like on every single one of my three-times-a-day-minimum pictures of food.
        noduerme 3y ago
        funny little story. I changed my phone number a few years back. But a friend of mine didn't get the memo. He's a really foodie guy who loves eating breakfast in off the map diners, and tacos from obscure food trucks. He sends like 3-6 photos per day of food he's eating. Anyway, I hadn't heard from him in a couple months, but we ended up in Vegas at the same time with some mutual friends. And I was like, hey, I haven't heard from you in months. He was like, "I thought it was really rude of you to tell me to stop sending you my breakfast photos". We put it together eventually that he had been sending his breakfast photos for TWO MONTHS to some new guy with my old cellphone number, before that guy was finally like "shut the fuck up and stop sending me pictures of your food". Funny side story about that guy (let's call him Bo). My brother is germaphobic and only eats tortilla chips up to where his fingers touched them, then makes a pile of tiny finger-touched corners of tortilla chips on a little napkin. Bo sits down at the bar and unconsciously just starts munching these tiny little corners for awhile, then goes, "where did you get these mini chips?" and watches in horror as my brother discards another one. I'm not sure how this relates to the original conversation about friends, but I'm sure it does somehow.
        BLKNSLVR 3y ago
        Whether in the proper spirit of HN or not, I very much appreciated both stories. Made me glad I posted my attempted humorous comment. Thank you :) > watches in horror as my brother discards another one. Love it. Edited to add after further thought, bringing it back into relevance with the topic: To steal a Hunter S. Thompson quote, the "too weird to live, too rare to die" friend: someone that just seems to attract unusual experiences and has great value merely for the volume of weird life stories they're happy to share and also somehow continue to collect. Inevitably overlaps with other categories, but also absolutely require a category of their own. I believe that I fit into this category for some of my more "vanilla" acquaintances (and even some family members).
    - noduerme 3y ago
      Sure. They just have a friendship where at least one of them takes the other for granted.
  - malloryerik 3y ago
    Ha, lovely joke, but indeed friends with benefits are clearly in the "pleasure" file. Ancient Greeks seem to have been expert at friends with benefits.
    - noduerme 3y ago
      Yeah, yeah. You got me. But I was kinda going for an unspoken point. Which man is sicker: One who needs to classify friendships as either pleasure or utility? Or one who admits a certain utility to pleasure, and a certain pleasure to utility? And saying it was accidental in either case is quite a sophisticated little excuse...
      - ycombinete 3y ago
        Aristotle would have been using "accidental" as opposed to "essential". Both used slightly differently to today's common usage. Essential being of the essence of a thing, i.e. it could not be that thing without it. Accidental being non-essential, i.e. it can be itself without that thing`[0]. It's not clear how a friendship can be essential though. Of what is the friendship essential? Or is it more like a friendship that fits the platonic form of a friendship. edit: I do realise that your comment was a joke, and doesn't deserve to be "uhm actuallied", but I've personally always found the essential vs accidental usage to be very useful and interesting :) [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/essential-accidental/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/essential-accidental/
        noduerme 3y ago
        Hah... that's fascinating (I by no means mind having a joke turn into a real dialogue, and this is good stuff). So, it's interesting to apply this ancient pre-Abrahamic-moralizing, Platonic division between extrinsic/intrinsic, deduction/induction to modern friendships. All of us westerners still have 19th C. romantic biases that make it hard to admit if a romance serves a purpose, that might block us from being honest with ourselves. Then again, we're not so different. Essential is that love who is so entangled with your life that you make every decision together. Aristotle might've well thought his relationship with a 12 year old slave boy defined the essence in "essential". So, no one's perfect, but it's still possible to guess the meaning. We might do well to begin sorting our relationships again by those which possess intrinsic meaning and the others which don't.
- malloryerik 3y ago
  The "highest order" in this case meaning of virtue. So three kinds of "friendship" (philia): of pleasure, of utility, of virtue (moral goodness). When we think of "real friendship" we're thinking of the third kind.
sgillen 3y ago
I’m not sure the distinction between fun friends and mutual interest friends makes sense to me. “Fun friends are noisy, carousing, extroverts; mutual-interest friends are generally rather quiet and sedentary.” It seems to me like from the definition of fun friends that they could be considered mutual interest friends where the mutual interest is in partying or drinking or whatever.
- dualityoftapirs 3y ago
  The article mentions mutual interest could be a subtype of fun, but they wanted to make a distinction between when getting together is the goal and when there's another objective beyond that. For example with drinking, they seem to think there's enough of a difference between the friends that get together to have a few drinks and the friends that get together to do a wine tasting focused on a region of France.
- darkerside 3y ago
  Isn't drinking just another mutual interest, albeit a noisy one?
darkclouds 3y ago
Military childhood, being moved around from pillar to post, then pretty much a university life after that. Cant say I totally agree with his observation, because there was not one mention of the word trust. Sure it could be implied by virtue of discussing the topic of friends, but its just an observation and categorisation, which is simplistic at best. Trust is something that happens over time, much like in a relationship, and with any sort of friendship, there needs to be trust. I can only assume from his military childhood and university movements, that his friendships perhaps dont have the depth of trust others seek or have. The problem with being too trusting and thus naive, is you become exploited whilst people masquarade as friends, and only once they have what they want from you, you see that friendship dissipate into nothing.
- noduerme 3y ago
  I think it goes down to what you'd be willing to sacrifice for them. There are a few people in this life I know I'd jump in front of a bus for. I don't actually need to know that they'd do the same for me, but I know it anyway. Trust is what you give, not what you get. What I'm willing to give when I don't want to give it. That's the meter, for me, of a friendship.
  - darkclouds 3y ago
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  - darkclouds 3y ago
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lazybreather 3y ago
I couldn't relate to any one of those fully. Boy is there a difference in culture! For us friends are not for helping when needed, networking, getting jobs for us or what not. In most cases of 'friends', its a non-transactional relationship. You just like talking to them, spending time with them. Yes, there are other 'acquaintances' for other things. Not sure if we need to make it so complicated.
- mikpanko 3y ago
  Isn’t that Fun Friends and Mutual Interest Friends?
  - bbotond 3y ago
    I'm probably from a similar culture and friendship here means a very close personal relationship similar to, or in some cases even stronger than, familial relationships. I feel that the original post's concept of friendship is very shallow compared to that. Friendship in my culture transcends such categorization.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - sgu999 3y ago
      > my culture You should both tell us what it is so that others may give a different opinion
  - watwut 3y ago
    Not really. I kinda feel like the categorization contains group of people you are social with, but does not have actual category for a "real friend". These are all groups of acquittances, people you are polite to who are polite to you back. Mutual interest friends sounds to be activity related acquittances. Once you are not in activity, neither of us cares. Fun friend is person you to go be drunk with or on trip with. But person I actually trust and can talk about more private issues openly, someone that may be fun or not but I feel deeper non-romantic connection to seems to be missing.
saithound 3y ago
I didn't find the categorization of friendships offered by the article all that useful. It seems far too simplistic and superficial to be the state-of-the-art in sociology: terms like trust, confidence, outgroup, ingroup seem curiously absent. But I could easily be wrong about that, as I don't know much about sociology in the first place. But I do know a few things about linguistics, and I'm well aware that the oldest meaning of friend wasn't "ally" in Rome. Amicus means "loved one", and its application to allies is a mere Lakoffian metaphor, and by no means, as claimed by the article, the origin of the concept. While recognizing the author's expertise in sociology, when I take into account Gell-Mann amnesia, I was much less able to take his explanations seriously after that introduction. The writing style didn't help either: it imitates that genre of 2010s SAT essays where the student has to demonstrate familiarity with the Western canon by strenously relating random events in books they read to inane questions such as "Are people defined by their occupations?"
Eisenstein 3y ago
What about friends that you love? Friends that might as well be family or even might be better than family, because you chose each other? A platonic love.
BLKNSLVR 3y ago
Friends that don't create unnecessary drama in my life are the only friends I aim to maintain, and I work at making that reciprocal. There are very few, we don't necessarily catch up often (and neither do we need to), but it's always natural, no pretense, when we get together. (I'm happy to hear about their life dramas, so long as they're not unnecessary - which cuts down the drama list by a good 90-95%) There are "work friends" who I may really enjoy the company of, and will probably miss when I or they leave the shared employer, but life gets in the way of keeping too large an entourage; if it's unmanageable then it won't be managed, aside from if they'd fit into the first category. There are "pity / polite friends" who, when we're sharing a location I'll happily talk to them because they're good people and don't deserve being ignored, but I do not and will not seek them out any other time. These "friends" usually exist in a different place on the bell curve than I do (both up and down). I don't (think I) make friends of utility, not even because it's wrong to use people, but because I just don't have the emotional stamina to pretend to be friends in order to get something out of it. I'd rather pay full price than owe a favour for a discount, especially if such favours are "time spent with" because of the emotional stamina thing. Funny thing I find about the "mutual interest friends" is that I don't have the depth of interest to discuss "thing" to the degree that these people do. I've actually found that entering a "mutual interest group", to me, ends up as a discouragement of pursuit of that interest, lest I end up as deeply embedded in the rabbit hole as they. I think I may be an arsehole (polite, but arsehole nonetheless). But I know enough compatible folks that I'm happy where I've landed. And unnecessary drama is a path to an early grave and an unsatisfying, unsatisfied life.
- zwnow 3y ago
  That is most likely the best description on how I think about the topic as well. Very well put together and very true words.
vincnetas 3y ago
I think this article invokes a bit of cognitive dissonance and a sense of repulsion in readers, by categorising friends in groups. And from my experience the largest group in my life appears to be "Sociable acquaintances". Kind of lowest quality friends. I assume lot of people are similar. They know lot of people and think that they have lots of friends, but when meaning of "friend" gets picked apart it appears that they might have only couple of real friends or even sadder when none. This realisation might bring rejection to the idea that the articles discusses or even trying to find flaws why the article is wrong. I found the article well written and interesting.
- uhura 3y ago
  The article reflects well many aspects of western life experience and might be poorly applicable in other contexts. The text shows signals of it when associating certain kinds of relationships to be more prevalent in certain social-economics classes. Having no friends usually is associated with sadness but some people actually associate it with determination and ambition as “friends” are distractions. If you only have acquaintances, an alternative grouping might provide a better framework to explain and reason about it. The overall model provided is a good starting point but seems to assume some general human kindness that might be far from real. Interactions might be faked on one or both sides, relationships usually are not symmetric, people have a difficult time adjusting their interpretation of the real world accordingly to the inputs they receive, and so on. I usually do not use the word friend for people that I mostly interact because of a shared hobby nor for social acquaintances, but I understand that they fit the authors definition. In practice the text has more value if you replace “friends” with “people you interact with” and if you add a “none of the above” category. Which does not diminish the value of the article in any way.
  - watwut 3y ago
    > Having no friends usually is associated with sadness but some people actually associate it with determination and ambition as “friends” are distractions. Just a few years ago (5-10), it was popular in tech circles to claim basically "I am hard worker because I did solitary hobby instead of socializing in school". Quite a lot of tech guys in my generations were effectively pushing that as ideology - socializing is waste of time for lazy people. You know, the true programmer is coding during christmas eve kind of meme (which was a thing in the past). Now days, the same circles talk about loneliness (and sometimes blame lack of traditional values for it).
qp11 3y ago
> All sorts of shared interests can be the Cultural Capital for this kind of friendship. I feel like my education was all about accumulation and allocation of financial capital, cause I guess its the easiest thing to measure and track. Things like Cultural and Social Capital were things I sort of stumbled upon much later in life.
- 01100011 3y ago
  I don't agree. I feel like my education, starting in pre-school, was all about the cultural/social aspect with some scholastic curriculum thrown in. I didn't understand that at the time, and that reflects the broken culture in my family. My mom was somewhat of a nerd, probably on the autism spectrum, and my dad was a cynical dork. Neither one passed on an appreciation for social connections or conventions. But I digress. School was all about social connections, it's just not something you're specifically instructed on or tested for.
- chasil 3y ago
  There are fundamental things in which I believe, that are at times inimical to the question of money. We are all equal, as people, and we should all have a say in our own lives, and the way that our lives are impacted by others. We should all have the opportunity to express how these are impinged. And we all must come to terms with that.
LoveMortuus 3y ago
I think everyone has their own definition of what a friend is for them and how they, mentally, acknowledge some people as friends and others as acquaintances.
chasil 3y ago
There are those who "have tasted your waters of truth." Those are your friends of intellect, not addressed in the linked document. We choose our friends. They are not our obligations, but our blessings.
jasmas 3y ago
This article seems to stretch the meaning of friend quite a bit beyond my comfort zone, but I believe that may just be me. Mutual interest friends border on what I'd call more acquaintances. But also, who drops a HTTP link in 2023? You just rawdogged my browser, bro. The site is also being served over HTTPS for those who haven't yet partaken.
Lio 3y ago
A true friend is someone you could ring up in the middle of the night to help bury a body (without paying them). Everyone else is an acquaintance of some degree. :P
newsclues 3y ago
Imaginary isn’t on the list?
- ReactiveJelly 3y ago
  Do your imaginary friends fit into one of the existing categories? Fun, mutual interest, backstage intimate?
  - newsclues 3y ago
    I don’t have any friends of any type, and have no memory of my childhood, so I don’t know if I ever had imaginary friends. Perhaps they fit those categories.
Karellen 3y ago
It's a bit tangential to the main topic, but > When people say “It’s a matter of principle!” they are usually doing something self-destructive. Oof. That's an interesting perspective on some of the choices I've made in the past. If no other choice, then the choice to use Free Software as much as possible, even when it is awkward to do so, might surely count. I note that the author does include the escape clause of "usually", so they're not claiming it as a universal. It is an interesting perspective to consider though. (Also, I've not caused any rifts with family members over principle, so at least I have that in my favour.)
- kubanczyk 3y ago
  > When people say “It’s a matter of principle!” they are usually doing something self-destructive. Ah, one of these deep thoughts... [citation needed]. "Self-destructive" is an emotionally-loaded term. Did you literally destruct yourself by using FOSS? How about an alternate phrasing: when people say “It’s a matter of principle!” they are usually sacrificing something. Mundane, eh?
dinkleberg 3y ago
I’m a bit surprised by the description of sociable acquaintances. I can’t imagine going out of my way to spend time with people who aren’t really my friends just for social convention. Especially things like going to their weddings! Now it’s one thing if they are your partners friend since that is a friend of a friend. But if it is someone you know but don’t actually like enough to elevate to full friend status, I don’t get it. That’s probably just me being a big introvert though. The idea of willingly going out and being around people I have to fake laugh with is not my idea of a good time.
- H8crilA 3y ago
  Imagine you're thinking of moving to a different country, but it is actually a difficult decision, where not only you but other people will be affected, some of them negatively. Now consider all the people at work from whom you'd immediately accept an invitation to a lunch/coffee. Are all of those people "close enough" for you to disclose your intention and ask for advice? Those that aren't are approximately the "sociable acquaintances". Sociable acquaintances require almost no trust from each other, beyond believing that the other person is not psychotic, or a dangerous sociopath, or something of this sort.
  - dinkleberg 3y ago
    Oh no, I’m not disputing the existence or value of having acquaintances. But rather I can’t imagine doing the level of socializing with them as described by the post.
    - H8crilA 3y ago
      It's required if you have a middle-manager-like job. Especially in a smaller company, you have to know (in this way) a whole lot of people, so that they pick up the phone if you call them.
DeathArrow 3y ago
For me, good friends or just 'friends' have all these qualities: they are allies, they are backstage intimates, they are fun, they share mutual interests with me. Not just some. I don't consider sociable acquaintances as friends.
d--b 3y ago
Nothing about emotions really? Wtf is wrong with sociologists, why must everything be so transactional? I just fucking like being with my friends. It brings me joy. Utter joy: no fun, no career advancement, no playing tennis, no life advice, no social cohesion. Of course I also do all these things, but they're more an excuse to be together than the other way around. I don't know, hormones maybe?
- rmellow 3y ago
  I was going to say this description sounds exactly like "fun friends", but then I noticed this: > Utter joy: no fun, ... Can you elaborate how "utter joy" is not fun? Also later on the author suggests friends can be a mix of the types (multiplex friends).
  - d--b 3y ago
    Fun implies some utility. I like being around the friend because we’re doing fun stuff, like partying or joking around. Joy means that whatever we do, I am simply happier because I am with the person. We could be doing non-fun stuff, like filing boring paperwork or the friend could be visiting me in the hospital cause I broke my leg, and I am in a lot of pain, but the mere presence of the person brings me joy.
    - lying4fun 3y ago
      A naive top of my head explanation: joy seems like something that’s been developed from a friendship that could’ve been roughly labeled by one/multiple of author’s categories. Basically, you feel joy only because you’ve spent time gossiping, confiding, having fun together (etc.) in the past, and at those stages, the relationship would be frameable by some of these categories Another argument to be made is that, let’s say after having a positive shrooms trip, many people feel joy being with other people even strangers. But that kind of joy doesn’t seem to be a significant sociological force in the western society, which is here being examined
- anjel 3y ago
  Time is a finite commodity with opportunity-cost and we choose to spend our time in someone else's company because we derive benefit, educational, political or even emotional. I can see such exchanges as more or less subtle but not devoid of bidirectional benefits conferred. Indeed when it's converted all in one direction, its reason enough to decommission that friendship. I struggle to envision a friendship that is absent of beneficial exchange or as you put it, non transactional. Can you describe the qualities ofsuch non transactional relationships in which no benefits are exchanged for your time?
musha68k 3y ago
Is it description of culture or is it framing? I can’t say, most of this isn’t something I can relate to (fortunately). The Internet is a collider, smashing contexts together and at an ever increasing clip.
fergie 3y ago
"Working-class and lower-middle class people tend to be very fun-oriented when they are young, but age out of it more quickly, into passive TV watching and its surrogates" Citation needed.
yung_steezy 3y ago
This is very similar to Aristotle's views on friendship in Nichomachean Ethics. He has a final category of 'true friend' that refer to someone who reflects part of your being back at you. Given that this is possible with another person he is able to resolve the question of "why should we behave morally?" by pointing out that every other human is potentially a true friend who may instantiate an aspect of you. In this case acting without considering the interests of others is acting against your own interests.

219 points by jger15 3y ago

Just to say: Good article. Randal Collins is one of the most insightful men alive, and it's a damn shame he isn't more widely known.

MightyBuzzard 3y ago

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stblack 3y ago

Aristotle outlined two kinds of friendships: 1. Accidental friendships 2. Friendships of the highest order He separated Accidental friendships into two types: * friendship of utility * friendships of pleasure So three kinds of friends, according to Aristotle.

farrarstan 3y ago
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noduerme 3y ago
It only took us 2300 years to add another kind that combines utility and pleasure, but isn't accidental: friends with benefits.
- ev7 3y ago
  But are friends with benefits friends?
  - swagempire 3y ago
    Are your regular friends really friends...
    - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
      Only if they click like on every single one of my three-times-a-day-minimum pictures of food.
      - noduerme 3y ago
        funny little story. I changed my phone number a few years back. But a friend of mine didn't get the memo. He's a really foodie guy who loves eating breakfast in off the map diners, and tacos from obscure food trucks. He sends like 3-6 photos per day of food he's eating. Anyway, I hadn't heard from him in a couple months, but we ended up in Vegas at the same time with some mutual friends. And I was like, hey, I haven't heard from you in months. He was like, "I thought it was really rude of you to tell me to stop sending you my breakfast photos". We put it together eventually that he had been sending his breakfast photos for TWO MONTHS to some new guy with my old cellphone number, before that guy was finally like "shut the fuck up and stop sending me pictures of your food". Funny side story about that guy (let's call him Bo). My brother is germaphobic and only eats tortilla chips up to where his fingers touched them, then makes a pile of tiny finger-touched corners of tortilla chips on a little napkin. Bo sits down at the bar and unconsciously just starts munching these tiny little corners for awhile, then goes, "where did you get these mini chips?" and watches in horror as my brother discards another one. I'm not sure how this relates to the original conversation about friends, but I'm sure it does somehow.
        BLKNSLVR 3y ago
        Whether in the proper spirit of HN or not, I very much appreciated both stories. Made me glad I posted my attempted humorous comment. Thank you :) > watches in horror as my brother discards another one. Love it. Edited to add after further thought, bringing it back into relevance with the topic: To steal a Hunter S. Thompson quote, the "too weird to live, too rare to die" friend: someone that just seems to attract unusual experiences and has great value merely for the volume of weird life stories they're happy to share and also somehow continue to collect. Inevitably overlaps with other categories, but also absolutely require a category of their own. I believe that I fit into this category for some of my more "vanilla" acquaintances (and even some family members).
  - noduerme 3y ago
    Sure. They just have a friendship where at least one of them takes the other for granted.
- malloryerik 3y ago
  Ha, lovely joke, but indeed friends with benefits are clearly in the "pleasure" file. Ancient Greeks seem to have been expert at friends with benefits.
  - noduerme 3y ago
    Yeah, yeah. You got me. But I was kinda going for an unspoken point. Which man is sicker: One who needs to classify friendships as either pleasure or utility? Or one who admits a certain utility to pleasure, and a certain pleasure to utility? And saying it was accidental in either case is quite a sophisticated little excuse...
    - ycombinete 3y ago
      Aristotle would have been using "accidental" as opposed to "essential". Both used slightly differently to today's common usage. Essential being of the essence of a thing, i.e. it could not be that thing without it. Accidental being non-essential, i.e. it can be itself without that thing`[0]. It's not clear how a friendship can be essential though. Of what is the friendship essential? Or is it more like a friendship that fits the platonic form of a friendship. edit: I do realise that your comment was a joke, and doesn't deserve to be "uhm actuallied", but I've personally always found the essential vs accidental usage to be very useful and interesting :) [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/essential-accidental/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/essential-accidental/
      - noduerme 3y ago
        Hah... that's fascinating (I by no means mind having a joke turn into a real dialogue, and this is good stuff). So, it's interesting to apply this ancient pre-Abrahamic-moralizing, Platonic division between extrinsic/intrinsic, deduction/induction to modern friendships. All of us westerners still have 19th C. romantic biases that make it hard to admit if a romance serves a purpose, that might block us from being honest with ourselves. Then again, we're not so different. Essential is that love who is so entangled with your life that you make every decision together. Aristotle might've well thought his relationship with a 12 year old slave boy defined the essence in "essential". So, no one's perfect, but it's still possible to guess the meaning. We might do well to begin sorting our relationships again by those which possess intrinsic meaning and the others which don't.
malloryerik 3y ago
The "highest order" in this case meaning of virtue. So three kinds of "friendship" (philia): of pleasure, of utility, of virtue (moral goodness). When we think of "real friendship" we're thinking of the third kind.

sgillen 3y ago

I’m not sure the distinction between fun friends and mutual interest friends makes sense to me. “Fun friends are noisy, carousing, extroverts; mutual-interest friends are generally rather quiet and sedentary.” It seems to me like from the definition of fun friends that they could be considered mutual interest friends where the mutual interest is in partying or drinking or whatever.

dualityoftapirs 3y ago
The article mentions mutual interest could be a subtype of fun, but they wanted to make a distinction between when getting together is the goal and when there's another objective beyond that. For example with drinking, they seem to think there's enough of a difference between the friends that get together to have a few drinks and the friends that get together to do a wine tasting focused on a region of France.
darkerside 3y ago
Isn't drinking just another mutual interest, albeit a noisy one?

darkclouds 3y ago

Military childhood, being moved around from pillar to post, then pretty much a university life after that. Cant say I totally agree with his observation, because there was not one mention of the word trust. Sure it could be implied by virtue of discussing the topic of friends, but its just an observation and categorisation, which is simplistic at best. Trust is something that happens over time, much like in a relationship, and with any sort of friendship, there needs to be trust. I can only assume from his military childhood and university movements, that his friendships perhaps dont have the depth of trust others seek or have. The problem with being too trusting and thus naive, is you become exploited whilst people masquarade as friends, and only once they have what they want from you, you see that friendship dissipate into nothing.

noduerme 3y ago
I think it goes down to what you'd be willing to sacrifice for them. There are a few people in this life I know I'd jump in front of a bus for. I don't actually need to know that they'd do the same for me, but I know it anyway. Trust is what you give, not what you get. What I'm willing to give when I don't want to give it. That's the meter, for me, of a friendship.
- darkclouds 3y ago
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- darkclouds 3y ago
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lazybreather 3y ago

I couldn't relate to any one of those fully. Boy is there a difference in culture! For us friends are not for helping when needed, networking, getting jobs for us or what not. In most cases of 'friends', its a non-transactional relationship. You just like talking to them, spending time with them. Yes, there are other 'acquaintances' for other things. Not sure if we need to make it so complicated.

mikpanko 3y ago
Isn’t that Fun Friends and Mutual Interest Friends?
- bbotond 3y ago
  I'm probably from a similar culture and friendship here means a very close personal relationship similar to, or in some cases even stronger than, familial relationships. I feel that the original post's concept of friendship is very shallow compared to that. Friendship in my culture transcends such categorization.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - sgu999 3y ago
    > my culture You should both tell us what it is so that others may give a different opinion
- watwut 3y ago
  Not really. I kinda feel like the categorization contains group of people you are social with, but does not have actual category for a "real friend". These are all groups of acquittances, people you are polite to who are polite to you back. Mutual interest friends sounds to be activity related acquittances. Once you are not in activity, neither of us cares. Fun friend is person you to go be drunk with or on trip with. But person I actually trust and can talk about more private issues openly, someone that may be fun or not but I feel deeper non-romantic connection to seems to be missing.

saithound 3y ago

I didn't find the categorization of friendships offered by the article all that useful. It seems far too simplistic and superficial to be the state-of-the-art in sociology: terms like trust, confidence, outgroup, ingroup seem curiously absent. But I could easily be wrong about that, as I don't know much about sociology in the first place. But I do know a few things about linguistics, and I'm well aware that the oldest meaning of friend wasn't "ally" in Rome. Amicus means "loved one", and its application to allies is a mere Lakoffian metaphor, and by no means, as claimed by the article, the origin of the concept. While recognizing the author's expertise in sociology, when I take into account Gell-Mann amnesia, I was much less able to take his explanations seriously after that introduction. The writing style didn't help either: it imitates that genre of 2010s SAT essays where the student has to demonstrate familiarity with the Western canon by strenously relating random events in books they read to inane questions such as "Are people defined by their occupations?"

Eisenstein 3y ago

What about friends that you love? Friends that might as well be family or even might be better than family, because you chose each other? A platonic love.

BLKNSLVR 3y ago

Friends that don't create unnecessary drama in my life are the only friends I aim to maintain, and I work at making that reciprocal. There are very few, we don't necessarily catch up often (and neither do we need to), but it's always natural, no pretense, when we get together. (I'm happy to hear about their life dramas, so long as they're not unnecessary - which cuts down the drama list by a good 90-95%) There are "work friends" who I may really enjoy the company of, and will probably miss when I or they leave the shared employer, but life gets in the way of keeping too large an entourage; if it's unmanageable then it won't be managed, aside from if they'd fit into the first category. There are "pity / polite friends" who, when we're sharing a location I'll happily talk to them because they're good people and don't deserve being ignored, but I do not and will not seek them out any other time. These "friends" usually exist in a different place on the bell curve than I do (both up and down). I don't (think I) make friends of utility, not even because it's wrong to use people, but because I just don't have the emotional stamina to pretend to be friends in order to get something out of it. I'd rather pay full price than owe a favour for a discount, especially if such favours are "time spent with" because of the emotional stamina thing. Funny thing I find about the "mutual interest friends" is that I don't have the depth of interest to discuss "thing" to the degree that these people do. I've actually found that entering a "mutual interest group", to me, ends up as a discouragement of pursuit of that interest, lest I end up as deeply embedded in the rabbit hole as they. I think I may be an arsehole (polite, but arsehole nonetheless). But I know enough compatible folks that I'm happy where I've landed. And unnecessary drama is a path to an early grave and an unsatisfying, unsatisfied life.

zwnow 3y ago
That is most likely the best description on how I think about the topic as well. Very well put together and very true words.

vincnetas 3y ago

I think this article invokes a bit of cognitive dissonance and a sense of repulsion in readers, by categorising friends in groups. And from my experience the largest group in my life appears to be "Sociable acquaintances". Kind of lowest quality friends. I assume lot of people are similar. They know lot of people and think that they have lots of friends, but when meaning of "friend" gets picked apart it appears that they might have only couple of real friends or even sadder when none. This realisation might bring rejection to the idea that the articles discusses or even trying to find flaws why the article is wrong. I found the article well written and interesting.

uhura 3y ago
The article reflects well many aspects of western life experience and might be poorly applicable in other contexts. The text shows signals of it when associating certain kinds of relationships to be more prevalent in certain social-economics classes. Having no friends usually is associated with sadness but some people actually associate it with determination and ambition as “friends” are distractions. If you only have acquaintances, an alternative grouping might provide a better framework to explain and reason about it. The overall model provided is a good starting point but seems to assume some general human kindness that might be far from real. Interactions might be faked on one or both sides, relationships usually are not symmetric, people have a difficult time adjusting their interpretation of the real world accordingly to the inputs they receive, and so on. I usually do not use the word friend for people that I mostly interact because of a shared hobby nor for social acquaintances, but I understand that they fit the authors definition. In practice the text has more value if you replace “friends” with “people you interact with” and if you add a “none of the above” category. Which does not diminish the value of the article in any way.
- watwut 3y ago
  > Having no friends usually is associated with sadness but some people actually associate it with determination and ambition as “friends” are distractions. Just a few years ago (5-10), it was popular in tech circles to claim basically "I am hard worker because I did solitary hobby instead of socializing in school". Quite a lot of tech guys in my generations were effectively pushing that as ideology - socializing is waste of time for lazy people. You know, the true programmer is coding during christmas eve kind of meme (which was a thing in the past). Now days, the same circles talk about loneliness (and sometimes blame lack of traditional values for it).

qp11 3y ago

> All sorts of shared interests can be the Cultural Capital for this kind of friendship. I feel like my education was all about accumulation and allocation of financial capital, cause I guess its the easiest thing to measure and track. Things like Cultural and Social Capital were things I sort of stumbled upon much later in life.

01100011 3y ago
I don't agree. I feel like my education, starting in pre-school, was all about the cultural/social aspect with some scholastic curriculum thrown in. I didn't understand that at the time, and that reflects the broken culture in my family. My mom was somewhat of a nerd, probably on the autism spectrum, and my dad was a cynical dork. Neither one passed on an appreciation for social connections or conventions. But I digress. School was all about social connections, it's just not something you're specifically instructed on or tested for.
chasil 3y ago
There are fundamental things in which I believe, that are at times inimical to the question of money. We are all equal, as people, and we should all have a say in our own lives, and the way that our lives are impacted by others. We should all have the opportunity to express how these are impinged. And we all must come to terms with that.

LoveMortuus 3y ago

I think everyone has their own definition of what a friend is for them and how they, mentally, acknowledge some people as friends and others as acquaintances.

chasil 3y ago

There are those who "have tasted your waters of truth." Those are your friends of intellect, not addressed in the linked document. We choose our friends. They are not our obligations, but our blessings.

jasmas 3y ago

This article seems to stretch the meaning of friend quite a bit beyond my comfort zone, but I believe that may just be me. Mutual interest friends border on what I'd call more acquaintances. But also, who drops a HTTP link in 2023? You just rawdogged my browser, bro. The site is also being served over HTTPS for those who haven't yet partaken.

Lio 3y ago

A true friend is someone you could ring up in the middle of the night to help bury a body (without paying them). Everyone else is an acquaintance of some degree. :P

newsclues 3y ago

Imaginary isn’t on the list?

ReactiveJelly 3y ago
Do your imaginary friends fit into one of the existing categories? Fun, mutual interest, backstage intimate?
- newsclues 3y ago
  I don’t have any friends of any type, and have no memory of my childhood, so I don’t know if I ever had imaginary friends. Perhaps they fit those categories.

Karellen 3y ago

It's a bit tangential to the main topic, but > When people say “It’s a matter of principle!” they are usually doing something self-destructive. Oof. That's an interesting perspective on some of the choices I've made in the past. If no other choice, then the choice to use Free Software as much as possible, even when it is awkward to do so, might surely count. I note that the author does include the escape clause of "usually", so they're not claiming it as a universal. It is an interesting perspective to consider though. (Also, I've not caused any rifts with family members over principle, so at least I have that in my favour.)

kubanczyk 3y ago
> When people say “It’s a matter of principle!” they are usually doing something self-destructive. Ah, one of these deep thoughts... [citation needed]. "Self-destructive" is an emotionally-loaded term. Did you literally destruct yourself by using FOSS? How about an alternate phrasing: when people say “It’s a matter of principle!” they are usually sacrificing something. Mundane, eh?

dinkleberg 3y ago

I’m a bit surprised by the description of sociable acquaintances. I can’t imagine going out of my way to spend time with people who aren’t really my friends just for social convention. Especially things like going to their weddings! Now it’s one thing if they are your partners friend since that is a friend of a friend. But if it is someone you know but don’t actually like enough to elevate to full friend status, I don’t get it. That’s probably just me being a big introvert though. The idea of willingly going out and being around people I have to fake laugh with is not my idea of a good time.

H8crilA 3y ago
Imagine you're thinking of moving to a different country, but it is actually a difficult decision, where not only you but other people will be affected, some of them negatively. Now consider all the people at work from whom you'd immediately accept an invitation to a lunch/coffee. Are all of those people "close enough" for you to disclose your intention and ask for advice? Those that aren't are approximately the "sociable acquaintances". Sociable acquaintances require almost no trust from each other, beyond believing that the other person is not psychotic, or a dangerous sociopath, or something of this sort.
- dinkleberg 3y ago
  Oh no, I’m not disputing the existence or value of having acquaintances. But rather I can’t imagine doing the level of socializing with them as described by the post.
  - H8crilA 3y ago
    It's required if you have a middle-manager-like job. Especially in a smaller company, you have to know (in this way) a whole lot of people, so that they pick up the phone if you call them.

DeathArrow 3y ago

For me, good friends or just 'friends' have all these qualities: they are allies, they are backstage intimates, they are fun, they share mutual interests with me. Not just some. I don't consider sociable acquaintances as friends.

d--b 3y ago

Nothing about emotions really? Wtf is wrong with sociologists, why must everything be so transactional? I just fucking like being with my friends. It brings me joy. Utter joy: no fun, no career advancement, no playing tennis, no life advice, no social cohesion. Of course I also do all these things, but they're more an excuse to be together than the other way around. I don't know, hormones maybe?

rmellow 3y ago
I was going to say this description sounds exactly like "fun friends", but then I noticed this: > Utter joy: no fun, ... Can you elaborate how "utter joy" is not fun? Also later on the author suggests friends can be a mix of the types (multiplex friends).
- d--b 3y ago
  Fun implies some utility. I like being around the friend because we’re doing fun stuff, like partying or joking around. Joy means that whatever we do, I am simply happier because I am with the person. We could be doing non-fun stuff, like filing boring paperwork or the friend could be visiting me in the hospital cause I broke my leg, and I am in a lot of pain, but the mere presence of the person brings me joy.
  - lying4fun 3y ago
    A naive top of my head explanation: joy seems like something that’s been developed from a friendship that could’ve been roughly labeled by one/multiple of author’s categories. Basically, you feel joy only because you’ve spent time gossiping, confiding, having fun together (etc.) in the past, and at those stages, the relationship would be frameable by some of these categories Another argument to be made is that, let’s say after having a positive shrooms trip, many people feel joy being with other people even strangers. But that kind of joy doesn’t seem to be a significant sociological force in the western society, which is here being examined
anjel 3y ago
Time is a finite commodity with opportunity-cost and we choose to spend our time in someone else's company because we derive benefit, educational, political or even emotional. I can see such exchanges as more or less subtle but not devoid of bidirectional benefits conferred. Indeed when it's converted all in one direction, its reason enough to decommission that friendship. I struggle to envision a friendship that is absent of beneficial exchange or as you put it, non transactional. Can you describe the qualities ofsuch non transactional relationships in which no benefits are exchanged for your time?

musha68k 3y ago

Is it description of culture or is it framing? I can’t say, most of this isn’t something I can relate to (fortunately). The Internet is a collider, smashing contexts together and at an ever increasing clip.

fergie 3y ago

"Working-class and lower-middle class people tend to be very fun-oriented when they are young, but age out of it more quickly, into passive TV watching and its surrogates" Citation needed.

yung_steezy 3y ago

This is very similar to Aristotle's views on friendship in Nichomachean Ethics. He has a final category of 'true friend' that refer to someone who reflects part of your being back at you. Given that this is possible with another person he is able to resolve the question of "why should we behave morally?" by pointing out that every other human is potentially a true friend who may instantiate an aspect of you. In this case acting without considering the interests of others is acting against your own interests.