[HN Gopher] Friendships form via shared context, not shared acti...
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Friendships form via shared context, not shared activities
Author : Kortaggio
Score : 145 points
Date : 2022-05-30 19:08 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (billmei.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (billmei.net)
| lordnacho wrote:
| Isn't activity just a part of context?
|
| Kick-about in the park -> simple activity, not many connections
| formed
|
| Weekly football team -> training, trips, club events -> more
| connections formed
|
| From my life the easiest connections are the ones where you're
| stuck together for a long time, eg education. You do pretty much
| everything together for years, you end up visiting each other's
| parents, you know each other's siblings, friends for life. In
| fact it's a reasonable test of how good friends you are with
| someone, whether you visited their house, know their family, know
| their friends, and know their CV.
|
| Work is a little bit different. People are coming and going,
| there's a hierarchy as well, and also people are busy and have
| already got a friend group. That being said there's still the
| "always together" element so plenty of opportunity.
|
| A more recent one is the "other parents in your kid's year". You
| end up hanging around your kid's friends parents a fair bit, and
| there's a fair chance they are similar to you. Which brings me to
| friend templates...
|
| Meet a few people and like the article says, you will find many
| have similar attributes. Often you end up meeting people who have
| basically had parallel lives to yourself, in two ways:
|
| - They literally have the same friends as you. I have this guy I
| went to school with briefly, who then turns up in all my friends'
| stories about what they got up to over the years, without me
| actually meeting him. Like a comedy show, he's just left when I
| arrive. I even had a random guy on an international flight tell
| me he was going to go see this guy, and I identified it because I
| knew so much about him. Anyway this is probably something that's
| happened to a fair few people, but they end up seeing the guy in
| real life and becoming friends.
|
| - They have done the same things as you, unconnected. They went
| to your uni, or studied what you studied. They work in your line
| of work. When you were kids, you had the same interests. They're
| from your city. These kinds of people are great seeds for
| relationships, but there's lots of them, and not all of them are
| watered.
| productceo wrote:
| When the writer says friendships, I believe the writer means
| communities, such as community of place.
| rozim wrote:
| Well, a variation on this is what Nobel prize winner Bob Dylan
| says in Brownsville Girl, that shared suffering is important:
| "Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections
| than people who are most content."
|
| Maybe suffering here can be interpreted as shared challenges.
| qgin wrote:
| On average, people need about 100 hours of interaction to feel a
| friendship connection.
|
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0265407518761225
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Given the methodology of the study I wouldn't trust it one bit.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| What I got out of this article is that some psychos share their
| wifi passwords with strangers.
| ripvanwinkle wrote:
| I think the article is spot on about friendships forming from
| shared context.
|
| However, shared activities are often the precursor to shared
| context - so joining a swim team or a bike team or any group
| activity is still a good idea.
|
| Doing shared activities with some regularity is one way to build
| shared context and ultimately friendship.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I had this realization somewhere around turning 30. I had been a
| touring musician in my teens and early twenties, and those were
| the friendships I had. I realized at one point that I had
| selected friends based on the kinds of music that they liked and
| whether I had partied with them, and that those were dumb
| criteria for friends.
|
| I vowed from then on I would choose who to hang out with based on
| how kind, thoughtful, and trustworthy they were, and that I would
| stop having endless worthless conversations about bands and other
| products. I could just enjoy the stuff that I was into without
| making it into a identity. Never looked back.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > One way to create a shared context is through shared struggle.
|
| Can't agree with this enough. Nearly all of my best friendships
| have been people I've met through a shared goal that required a
| ton of work (e.g. some intensive artistic training as a youth,
| early startup jobs, etc.)
|
| I always realize how lucky I am to have had some of these intense
| "struggles" pretty early on in my life, as I've met people who
| didn't have that opportunity and I realize how my network of real
| friendships has greatly benefited from that.
| baxtr wrote:
| I think he's onto something. Then again, why aren't we still
| friends with everyone we spent a lot of time with when we were in
| elementary school? I fear a critical component is missing.
| layer8 wrote:
| Because the context changed and lastingly stopped being a
| shared one?
| Pamar wrote:
| Not only that but... how many of us have brothers and
| sisters... but are not friends with them?
| going_ham wrote:
| I really can't understand the idea of friendship. Throughout my
| life, I never had the opportunity to foster a meaningful friendly
| relationship (one with trust, loyalty, support etc.) I found it
| to be apparent when people toss over the things I do.
|
| I have a lot of acquaintances and friends but very few close
| friends. Other than that, I feel like most people only talk with
| me when they absolutely need something. Otherwise, I am always
| the last person to be called on anything.
|
| > Becoming disentangled from your web of mutual commitments,
| shared history, and collective responsibility is to be rendered
| into a transaction, a slave.
|
| When author compared that having this "disentangled" social web
| is like being enslaved to business, I couldn't relate it. Isn't
| it completely normal? I don't want to idolize friendship, but
| everything will end eventually. I have experienced this
| throughout multiple phases of my life. No one of the so called
| friends made effort to contact me once I disappeared from social
| media. Only my close friends remained because I put the effort to
| do so. When I stopped putting effort, even these relationship got
| eroded (One can't clap with a single hand). This was the moment I
| realized that there is no such thing as friendship which author
| described.
|
| Life is what you give meaning to. It's nice that author is there
| to foster social meaning. For some reason the post felt like it's
| trying to create void that people without close friends are
| missing things from life. When I came in peace that I can't rely
| on any other person but myself, I found peace.
|
| Life has multiple dimensions. No one has to live in one way. It's
| better to find our own ways and be happy with it.
|
| PS: Just a minor opinion! Do not take it personally.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I think of that show _My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic_ where
| the whole point is that the friends are all very different.
| shaman1 wrote:
| Congrats to the author, a good observation. I was just talking
| with one of my friends who recently became a father about how
| quickly new moms bond and form friendships due to the common
| context.
|
| But similar interests can make the bond stronger and deeper I'd
| argue.
| gringoDan wrote:
| I think this phenomenon is part of the reason it's difficult to
| form friendships as adults. The shared context that the article
| mentions requires a lot of time around your circle of people,
| just "hanging out". It's tough to make that time as an adult with
| a career, family, etc.
|
| This may be why college friendships can be so strong - often a
| lot of time is spent living and working around friends by
| default, without needing to schedule it.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Yeah it's this, just shared time, specifically time hanging out
| shooting the shit.
|
| For instance of all of my coworkers I am paradoxically the
| closest to are the ones from out of town. I think this is
| because when they visited they had no other obligations so we
| ended up shooting the shit a lot. Where co-workers who lived
| here were always busy with family/life obligations.
| hosteur wrote:
| If this is the case then why wouldn't workplaces create lots of
| strong friendships? There is a lot of shared context. I'm not
| sure I buy author's brushing this away as being because
| coworkers are trained to replace you. There is lots of
| competition in school and college also.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| In my experience, workplaces HAVE created lots of strong
| friendships in my life.
|
| Though, it's interesting, it varies tremendously by workplace
| culture and the work you're doing. In my jobs doing manual
| labor or jobs involving a lot of boring hanging out (as a
| cashier / supervisor / lifeguard) I made lots of friendships.
| In jobs where it's been primarily knowledge work, I had a lot
| of good acquaintances, but rarely did that turn into more. I
| think that being able to talk makes a big difference. It's
| worth noting though that when I was a lifeguard, I was a long
| lived employee surrounded by short term employees. The
| culture was in flux. There are times when I fit in and we
| became good friends (which remain to this day) and there are
| times when I didn't fit in or like the people and didn't make
| any friends. The manual labor jobs produced more lasting
| friendships than the lifeguarding for whatever reason.
| Something about actually suffering with others and working
| toward common aims and being able to talk about stuff
| produced the best friendships. (I also think that the nature
| of the work filtered out some of the lower quality people
| too, and that played a role.)
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Pretty much every friend I have is a co-worker.
| bitcurious wrote:
| To make friends you need to make mistakes. Litigation culture
| in the workplace prevents that.
| Sirened wrote:
| is this a thinly veiled complaint about being hit with
| sexual harassment complaints? The simple trick to solve
| this problem is not to sexually harass your friends either
| barry-cotter wrote:
| You're a bad person and you should feel bad.
| nickff wrote:
| Why did you make two logical leaps just to arrive at an
| accusation?
|
| From the HN Guidelines: " Please respond to the strongest
| plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a
| weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
| "
| jacquesm wrote:
| I don't see this. I've yet to be afraid of being sued by a
| co-worker and after a couple of decades I can assure you
| that I've made plenty of mistakes.
| slothtrop wrote:
| If you aren't more guarded around co-workers than your
| friends, maybe you should be.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Why on earth would a co-worker sue me?
| armchairhacker wrote:
| I doubt "coworkers trying to replace you" has much of an
| impact.
|
| The bigger issue with some workplaces is that they're _not_
| really close-quarters, because they're very impersonal. Sure
| you might be all in the same room a lot, but you're largely
| discussing business stuff or working independently. Even
| corporate "parties" and retreats can be surprisingly
| professional and unnatural. It's almost like you don't really
| "interact" with the person, you interact with their business
| facade.
|
| If you're not just talking business with your coworkers,
| you're actually talking about life and hanging out and not
| having a fake professional personality, then you do form
| friendships. I say this from experience.
|
| Though talking about non-professional things and not putting
| on a facade also makes you vulnerable, so those companies
| where everyone is competing against each other happen to be
| the ones where everyone is impersonal.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| The workplace is more like a relay race than a basketball
| team. Everyone may share the same project, but they all have
| different parts to it, and are unlikely to share the same or
| a sufficiently similar understanding of it.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| It does. A lot of younger knowledge workers (not at all
| restricted to STEM) make good friends in their first job
| because of shared context. Eventually increased
| responsibility through experience means you necessarily open
| yourself up less and spend more time mentoring, guiding, or
| otherwise leading.
| fleddr wrote:
| I think you're right, you need proximity and significant time
| together to create and maintain friendships. Which is very hard
| to organize with adults.
|
| Another way to look at it is the shift in priorities. When I
| was young, all I cared about is friends. I found it more
| important than school or my parents. I maximized my time with
| friends.
|
| As adult "friend", you're way down the list of priorities,
| after the job, family, personal health, chores, recovery
| time...and then there's you, the friend. It's not malice,
| adults simply have too much shit to manage.
|
| Some might be so busy that the last thing they need is a new
| friend.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > It's tough to make that time as an adult with a career,
| family, etc.
|
| It's more difficult than college, where everyone is thrown
| together into close quarters.
|
| However, it's not impossible. It's just different and requires
| different techniques. If you sit back and wait for the contexts
| to come to you, it's going to be a slow journey. If you go out
| of your way to create those contexts, it's actually not that
| difficult to find and make new friends.
|
| Hosting events, BBQs, get togethers, and any other social event
| is an easy way to start it off. This gets massively easier when
| you have kids, IMO, because you can now also host play dates,
| invite other families along to activities, meet other parents
| through daycare or school, and so on. It won't happen if you're
| staying at home or waiting for people to come to you, of
| course, but it's not that hard to get out and meet new people
| and friends-of-friends once you start getting out there and
| making an effort.
|
| Even work can be an easy pivot to new connections if you make
| an effort. In-person makes this especially easy: Get into the
| habit of inviting people out to lunch with you once a week and
| ask if they can think of anyone else to invite along. The
| bigger the company, the easier it is to be exposed to a lot of
| new people this way. Again, it won't happen if you're not
| making an effort, but the amount of effort required is much
| smaller than it may seem.
| danenania wrote:
| A hack that takes advantage of this is to look for
| activities/events where you spend a lot of sustained time with
| others.
|
| So instead of a meetup once a month, go to a week-long retreat
| or an all weekend hackathon.
|
| Or if there's someone you'd like to get closer to as a friend,
| instead of just inviting them to hang out once in awhile,
| invite them to go on a trip somewhere.
|
| Once you reach the tipping point of enough shared time/context
| by fast-forwarding in this way, it's easier to then settle into
| a more ordinary rhythm where you see people periodically but
| still feel they are real friends.
| zamfi wrote:
| Having a family offers a natural avenue for this, though:
| parents of your kids' friends share a lot of context with you.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| The reason friendships between adults are hard is because
| adults are reluctant to make themselves vulnerable, but opening
| yourself to others and making yourself vulnerable is exactly
| what you need to start building a shared history of living
| (shared context).
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| Cf. propinquity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propinquity
| tarr11 wrote:
| I'm having trouble understanding what the author means by
| "context" in this article.
|
| It seems to mean "your location within your network of people"?
| lapcat wrote:
| I found this article strange, because the author seemed to be
| reversing cause and effect. Isn't "shared context" -- trust,
| loyalty, love, belonging, safety -- the result of friendship
| rather than the cause of friendship? How can you trust and be
| loyal to someone you just met?
|
| "We can't help but desperately compete in this unwinnable game of
| having the best collection of attributes to show off." I don't
| get it, because friends don't need each other to be the best
| person in the world at any given thing. Having things in common
| seems to be enough, no? Does anyone need to be "unique", a
| special snowflake in the world? In some sense friends are
| interchangeable, in that it's a total accident of circumstances
| which few of the billions of people on Earth you happen to hang
| out with. But I'm not clear on why "global uniqueness" is
| necessary for friendship. That seems to be an impossible
| standard, and it's not the basis of any friendship I've ever had.
|
| "In my early attempts to make friends, I tried inviting people
| with shared interests to activities like sailing or grabbing
| brunch". I think the missing ingredient here is simply time. It's
| hard to become friends in just a few hours.
|
| [Edit:] "One way to create a shared context is through shared
| struggle. This is why many organizations implement ritualized
| hazing to initiate new members, but the important thing is not
| the hazing, it's the sense that you are working together with
| your fellow humans to achieve a super-human goal."
|
| The super-human goal of getting your butt paddled by a frat boy?
| No, hazing is just a perverse power play, nothing more. They do
| hazing because they can, and get a kick out of it.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >How can you trust and be loyal to someone you just met?
|
| Duty. that's what the military often is like and my experiences
| with military friendships overlap a lot with the idea that long
| lasting friendships are build around context, although I think
| 'shared sense of purpose' describes it somewhat better.
|
| Starting a business together or going through disease or really
| anything where people have real skin in the game and there's
| something at stake is where people can form deep, meaningful
| bonds quickly.
| lapcat wrote:
| Are you close friends with everyone you served with, though?
| Isn't there someone in the military you _didn 't_ like? ;-)
|
| AFAICT the formula for friendship is pretty simple: time +
| shared interests + personality/chemistry. The military is a
| good way to spend a lot of time together, and maybe a shared
| interest too.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I'm actually still close friends with a lot of them, and
| importantly that includes people I didn't really "like"
| intuitively but I relied on for a long time.
|
| I don't think it's that simple really. Chemistry and
| personality are overrated. Sacrifice and obligation are
| what really binds people together and if we want to extend
| the discussion a bit, I think modern marriage which has
| shifted from being framed as something that's about duty
| and family towards shared interest and chemistry is an
| example of how frail this is as a basis for relationships
| as well.
| lapcat wrote:
| The article author was basically asking "How can we make
| new friends?" and mentions sailing, brunch, and borrowing
| a neighbor's wifi. Whereas you're talking about... going
| to war. It just feels like you're discussing something
| quite a bit beyond the article.
|
| I had some close friends among schoolmates, but I
| wouldn't characterize our relationship as "sacrifice and
| obligation". What does that even mean to a 12 year old?
| What does it mean to a college undergrad? I can
| understand what it means in the military, but that's a
| rather unique situation in life.
| mrxd wrote:
| I just don't find it plausible that only certain people are
| capable of love, trust, loyalty, etc. and we should be looking
| for those kinds of people. It seems more likely that this level
| of investment is costly and people already have these kinds of
| relationships.
|
| The argument seems tautological. A good friend is someone who
| is loyal, trustworthy, etc., so look for these traits. But in
| reality, everyone has these traits, they just reserve them for
| a small number of high investment relationships. So the claim
| is that to make good friends, look for someone who wants to be
| your friend. Which isn't that helpful at the end of the day.
| civilized wrote:
| Shared context is necessary but I think shared perspectives and
| values are what ultimately matter. I have shared context with a
| lot of people at work but I'm only good friends with one or two.
|
| Very relatedly, my wife is my best friend, and I tend to become
| friends with people who are like her. (ugh, Wife Guy)
| jdkee wrote:
| Proximity, unplanned interactions and privacy are three key
| components or forming new friendships.
|
| See https://www.businessinsider.com/things-that-help-people-
| make...
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Thanks, some actual evidence-based claims instead if this
| pointless unsupported conjecture.
| PKop wrote:
| Made a comment about this on another thread [0]:
|
| "True friendship comes mostly from shared struggle. Think sports
| teams, military, small teams at work, even childhood friends and
| the experience growing up.
|
| It is hard to establish anything meaningful of a connection with
| casual interactions, and expecting to just "party/play hard" with
| people you don't really know is putting the cart before the
| horse. First you must work hard together.
|
| I'd suggest joining a Crossfit gym or similar. I've had great
| success meeting people within the context of group workouts. It
| has regular class schedules, and provides a way to ease into
| social interactions at your own pace as you'll be around the same
| people regularly. Often this leads to opportunities to do things
| together outside of the classes.
|
| Additionally, there are likely individuals with similar
| disinterest in the common activities you mentioned in you CS
| classes. Finding opportunities to work with someone on class
| assignments, studying or projects together would fall in the
| "shared struggle" category."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28969047
| [deleted]
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