He lost nothing. He gained some information that some people were never his friend.

And how was WhatsApp incentivising them to pretend to be friends?

Because, I am guessing it was less like friendship and more like convenient boredom reduction. The WhatsApp group is there, a joke or whatever gets posted, maybe a lets go to the bar guys (or girls?) but the bond is not strong enough that they bother to contact people who are on another medium.

This is called "splitting", or all-or-nothing thinking. It's a common psychological defense mechanism.

You don't just have friends and non-friends. It's a spectrum. By raising the bar for reaching you some people no longer cared to be your acquaintances, and others remained connected but talked to you less frequently. And so you lose some of the contact that you had with other people because of your own actions, no one else's.

At the "far end of friendship spectrum", that is the closest form of friendship, there's no one there. Given enough obstacles that you yourself put up eventually you'll lose absolutely everyone.

I genuinely don't get how people manage to find excuses to talk to most people. Even before I left Facebook I mostly spoke to people face to face and when that became impractical I stopped talking altogether.

"By raising the bar for reaching you some people no longer cared to be your acquaintances, and others remained connected but talked to you less frequently. And so you lose some of the contact that you had with other people because of your own actions, no one else's."

This is completely ass-backwards thinking. We don't have apps growing out of us and we are not doing things to ourselves "because of our own actions".

Leaving a bad app is a bit like leaving a country where a dangerous tyrannical dictator has set up shop. You didn't decide to rape murder and pillage your neighbors, the corrupt leader did. Getting the hell out of dodge is an extremely reasonable thing to do, and you are not cutting yourself off from your acquaintances, the evil dictator is.

Besides, app messaging is completely backwards anyways, we invented protocols because they are the best way to reliably communicate.

If you leave a "country where a dangerous tyrannical dictator has set up shop" you will also almost certainly lose friends and acquaintances. And if you don't you won't. It's always heartbreaking for all kinds of refugees. But leaving, arguably, has more upsides, for example not getting brutalized by the internal security services.

I think this sentiment underplays how useful casual acquaintances are, on their own but more importantly as a step towards forming those strong bonds in the first place.

As an adult, how do you make the strong bonds that lead to people going out of their way to remember to invite you to things? Maybe you meet someone and click immediately, more likely it's someone you know from work, and commonly it's acquaintances from seemingly superficial activities that become close friends after you're mingled and mixed with enough folks to find your tribe.

"everyone complains about group chats being noisy" but there's a good reason they're still in there (obviously a big part of it is fomo but it's not obvious to me that everyone's lives would be better rejecting them. Human social dynamics are messy and not efficient).

That second step is the hardest part. How on earth do you make new close friends, I try to be the first to reach out but people seem too guarded or busy the only way they'll meet is if the gathering is large enough but the problem with that is those are very hard to organize since everyone has their own schedule.

I think the answer to that.... is that you can't, unless by accident :( All of my close-ish friends I met randomly and we just clicked.

But like, the world is going in a direction sadly where meaningful human friendships are disappearing, being replaced with endless acquittances who do not care about you, and you do not care about them either. Which I find really sad.

Most of organising problems are btw due to the lack of effort, not a true lack of time. "I am busy" is usually just a convenient excuse to why you don't want to do something together, not that you don't actually have time. (You do have time binging netflix, do ya?)

I guess I should be out more so I can have those "accidents" with like-minded people. Ironic how we're more connected than ever yet so distant to each other. You'd think it would make things a lot easier but it's like it's done the opposite.

I have personally found that "being out more" doesn't help with it at all. The accidents happen in unexpected places and times. Going "out" mostly gets you the "usual" activities - where you are almost guaranteed to not find anything like that.

Yeah, the internet has been a blessing in the past in terms of socialisation, but nowadays, it has made it even worse than before. IRL activities are dying because everyone is on social media - but not spending any time with each other, just scrolling alone. I find it very sad.

With that being said, if you want to chat, I'd be happy to :)

I'd love to chat how do we exchange contact here?

Reply to this message with a messaging platform of your choice. Or click on the link in my profile, that also works.