Friending

I cast some thoughts about friendship here, mostly about Christians limiting their friendships. Today I’d like to noodle on social media and “friending”. I tweeted a couple of questions over the weekend:

What does being a friend mean to you? What does it take for you to call someone your friend?
How has social media affected our definition of the words “community” and “friend”. Has it diluted it, broadened it, both?

The consensus seems to be that a friend is someone that you can call on in your time of need. I think that’s certainly one good criteria. That latter question ended up getting me a wider variety of answers. Before I delve into that, let me tell you what prompted these questions in the first place. It gets back to my podcast on critique.

One of the answers I kept getting, whether stated or implied, was that one didn’t critique one’s friends publically. Setting aside the notion of whether or not that’s true, what really jumps out at me is the notion that if you follow someone on Twitter or Facebook you are a friend of theirs on some level. I think that dilutes the definition of friend, at least the idea that a friend is someone that you can rely on and that you can share meaningful parts of your life with.

Don’t get me wrong, I do have “real” friends on Twitter, Facebook, and in the blogging/podcasting community. Some of these people I’ve met only a few times and others not at all. I wouldn’t have met most of these people any other way. So in that sense, it may have broadened my definition of friendship/community to include people I’m not physically proximal to. Those are people that I will share my deeper thoughts/doubts/fears with. Those are people I would “take aside” and hold accountable or challenge. I also expect those people to do the same for me.

Those people are only a small percentage of my crowd/tribe/whatever though. If I follow you or friend you that likely means I’m interested in what you’re saying. It certainly means that potential friendship is there, though as I told one guy, forming/maintaining friendships strictly through social media is practically speaking exponentially more difficult. It means I will be “friendly” with you, applying the Golden Rule as liberally as I can. More than likely though you’re not my friend and none of the rights and honors thereto appertaining, appertain to you. So in that sense my concept of community/friendship stays pretty tight.

I don’t want to water the word “friend” and I fear that the wider the social media net goes, the more likely that is to happen, at least on a macro level. What about you? Thoughts?

  • http://www.michaelspence.us Michael Spence

    I may wind up speaking about friends and “friends.” <sigh> That's what happens when others decide to manhandle terms into their ideological boundaries. “Gay,” “fundamentalist” … the list continues. Dadgummit, I want my lexicon back.

  • http://jimyesthatjim.com/ Jim Ryan

    I've been having trouble with this a little, myself. I have a joke that I sometimes use with people whom I see getting on their Xboxes or Wiis: I say to them, “Playing with your imaginary friends?” They'll then often respond, “No, these are actual people getting online and playing.” And I'll then respond to that by saying, “Just because those Friend IDs are being played by real people doesn't mean they're not imaginary.” And at that point we chuckle and go on.

    But the question really does bug me. If I go through a Friend list I find that some of them I think of more as acquaintances, some as “pals” or at least people I'd like to “pal around with,” some as friends and some as close friends. There's really an emotional component here that I'm not sure I can adequately analyze. I'm finding there are people I've never met whom I've gotten very attached to and developed a great deal of affection for, enough to want to be friends with them – in some cases this is reciprocated and I guess that those people ARE my friends (heck, in at least one case I feel like I've pretty much been adopted as a long-lost family member).

    But it's really nice to have the kind of face-to-face validation that lets you know it's true. I've had that on one or two occasions, but it'd be great to have more of it. Without that, I guess it's still a lot easier to fill in details about people using my imagination than it would be if I'd met them in person – which means I can't be completely sure I know how they'd really feel about me or how I'd really feel about them if we knew each other better.

    I guess what I'm saying is that I'm grateful for the online associations I've developed but I'd really like to meet them all in person. That way we could have the subtlety of interaction that human relationships thrive on. I'd love that.

  • RobAC

    I guess that I am one of those who use the term friend rarely. I have many friendly acquaintances, but I reserve the term friend for just a very few.

  • http://www.basilsands.com basilsands

    This is a good point and I think Michael hit on the true course of our language, friend isn't what it used to be and will continue to diverge away from what it once meant. We will of course simply create a new word, or redefine another, to indicate a person who is a “true acquaintance of significant relational importance and pleasant associative companioinship”. For that matter perhaps we can just acronymize that phrase… Tasripac , or shortened to Tasri

    … I have inumerable friends, but 'there is a Tasri who is closer than a brother'.

  • spiritualtramp

    I thought about the notion of coming up with a new word, but the old one works well enough for me. I just try and use it sparingly.

    Thanks for the comment!

  • http://kansasbob.com Kansas Bob

    “one didn’t critique one’s friends publically” – I like that.. it is is an interesting proposition when applied to internet “friends”.

«
»