On the Friendship Recession, Relationship Recession

What is friendship? Tech ablism. Amish life. A.I. final boss.

What is friendship and is it recessing or are we now noticing how rare it’s always been? According to Kyla Scanlon we are in a “friendship recession” across demographics. How could this happen?

Friendship is being with someone in a way that feels like you’re on the same team across boundaried immersions.

In friendship, incentives are aligned. There’s a level of trust. This is true for co-workers and sports teammates but friendship in it’s purest form is more than aligned incentives.

The ultimate friendship is noncommercial, built around creation, IRL and forged in adversity. A friendship is playful. That’s the OG way. “Do you want to play?” is how kids make friends. A friend is a good friend if we can spar. Make ourselves vulnerable and trust we don’t get hit, or hit, where it hurts. A friend responds. A friend helps without monetary incentive.

Friends are formed through spending time with people. Via sharing. Sharing energy. Sharing thoughts. You have to be around the same people, in real life, over and over, for a friendship to form.

Friendship = Time Together x External Adversity x Creation x Aligned Incentives x Vulnerability x Good Feelings x Sharing

(minus broken promises, misaligned incentives, bad feelings and time apart)

Why might society experience a friendship recession?

Something to consider. . .

Historically, if you lived alone, you died quick. Today, technology enables living and working alone on a mass scale. We can afford selfishness. In fact, that is the norm! Tribal/communal/familial living is NOT the norm. That’s an amazing fact.

The classically common form of resource sharing is food sharing. How many people do we share food with daily? 0, 1, 2? These days it’s mostly 0 or 1 person. Sharing food is a good way to make friends. I still remember the lunch tables I ate at in school.

Food and caring is the OG money.

Today, we don’t need to store energy in our peers because we store it in bank accounts. However when we are really down and out, banks won’t be there for you, or even throw you a bone. They will charge overdraft fees, increase interest rates and turn their backs.

Technology enables the mainstream person to live alone.

Even with all our tech, living alone is not great. I don’t prefer it. No chance I would live alone without my technologies. Imagine your daily activities are working alone all day, washing clothes by hand in a buck of soap and water, hanging them to dry, gathering and chopping firewood, building a fire, walking to the store or hunting, hauling food back, prepping the food, cooking it, cleaning the dishes by hand, and finally your entertainment is reading a book if you’re lucky. All alone, that would suck so bad. It would be an intolerable life.

Washing machine, dryer, gas heat, electricity, cars, Ubers, microwaves, stoves, refrigerators, food delivery, dish washers, podcasts, YouTube, audiobooks, infinite music, hot showers, social media, videogames, all make a physically alone life almost tolerable.

Near-tolerable for how long? Is it fulfilling? Is it stable? Or is it fragile… When shit hits the fan, does your company really give a fuck about you? Can a computer hold your hand?

It’s not easy to trade technology for more friendship and less physical aloneness. It doesn’t work like that because everyone we know lives a modern lifestyle. The trade doesn’t happen unless your Amish and you can return to an existing locality driven community. Amish communities have strict rules about which technologies are allowed. Generally that means no cars, electricity, phones or TV’s in the home. During Rumspringa, 16 year old Amish teens leave their community to experience modernity. 90% return to Amish living.

This makes sense to me - become formed in a community without modern technologies. You can see tech effects on wellbeing if you have a non-tech community to compare with. I haven’t tried an Amish life. All I’ve known is techno-commercial-individualism. There’s no Amish community for me to return to. There’s no community for me to return to. It’s just me. With my screens, landlord, roommate, co-workers and a few friends I see once in a while. No complaints, but I will say I’m concerned for the wellbeing of humanity, especially in the long term. Uncertainty is high. Humanity has not tried this before.

We can draw the line with technology or YOLO toward dopamine dystopia.

I’m looking at the Amish and drawing my tech boundaries. I limit media, videogames and porn. I limit processed food to near nothing. A.I. is the big question mark.

A.I. could be gasoline on the flames of a friendship recession. It could accelerate inadvertent species suicide - more on that here.

If IRL human friends is signal, then the noise is smartphones, videogames, porn, podcasts, music, YouTube, binge watching, substances, corporate work, social media and the final boss: A.I. in various forms – chatbot, feeds, artist, co-creator, “friend.”

There’s nothing wrong with this tech (other than it can destroy humanity). The noise interferes with meaning, relationships and procreation. The noise did not exist while we evolved. It is misaligned with our genetics.

It takes a village to a raise a child… not an A.I. chatbot.