Going through ten different online vocal stims with a friend who actually gets it is a good time in its own way. But these days, even when we are physically together, our minds still remain online. Most conversations now have the familiar intrusion of “Did you see this tweet?” or “Did you see that post?”—and the one I dread most: “Did you see what that celebrity ate/wore/did/said last night?” The answer is almost always no. Which means there is then an attempt to narrate a reel or reconstruct a tweet out loud. Halfway through, the idea begins to sound stupider than it did when we saw it on the screen. We abandon the effort and the phone is passed across the table. For a moment, all of us look away from each other to look down at the device.. I love social media. It has introduced me to so many people I never would have met otherwise. Through it, we can exist in a thousand places at once, connected to lives far from our own. Five years ago, I happened to become friends with someone who lived in another country. Since then, both of us have moved here and there for work. Our friendship exists almost entirely online, interrupted only by the occasional trip we make to see each other once or twice a year. He is still the first person I call when something significant happens. If we had spent the last five years only sending each other reels and leaving 🔥 emojis under each other’s posts, we would not have the friendship that we do. We have a great friendship because we understand each other, something that only became possible through the long calls and conversations we shared. The internet made the introduction possible but it did not build the relationship. We did that part ourselves.. It is the gift of social media to give us connection without proximity. It keeps people within reach and preserves acquaintances who might otherwise fade. For that, it is generous. But a downside of this transaction is that we start to mistake being informed about somebody’s life for being close to them. You could know what someone ate for dinner, where they travelled or what they wore to a wedding and still not know how they are. There was a time when seeing someone required planning around them. Now it is possible to encounter fragments of people’s lives without either person intending to. We confuse this steady stream of fragments with maintenance—we say we are “caught up”. And most adult friendships tend to fall prey to this catch-up trap.. Can you imagine if Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Joey never hung out at Central Perk, or if Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda only talked on a group chat? The kind of close friendships they had wouldn’t exist at all. The future of human connection might actually be in the past—not in some nostalgic way, but in a purely practical one. Friendship used to be built in the ordinary: going to the supermarket together, going on walks just to talk, sitting around doing nothing at all. T
