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I still feel like I haven’t quite properly articulated the ridiculous benefit and power of making friends online You can follow any of hundreds of millions of people worldwide If you are consistently interesting in their replies, they will like you, and want to help you
You shouldn’t get into this game with a sort of short-term profiteering mindset, but making friends is *real* wealth. It’s people who will feed you & host you in their homes & care about your well-being. People who will help you find jobs and set you up on dates. Friends do that https://t.co/3UewxBQ5qn
Social capital is real wealth. I can do things and go places that people with 10x more money than me can’t, because of referrals and connections. And to emphasise: I was not born connected! My dad was a garbageman! I am literally just a reply guy who’s sensitive and persistent
The things that people want out of being rich, or famous (both very outdated aspirations, by the way, inherited from decades ago IMO) are both entirely attainable via simply making friends, if you are sufficiently precise about what exactly you want
Like, say you wanna be rich- why? to what end? So you can fly around the world and drive sports cars and so on? The right friends can actually help you with that! Why own your own boat when you can ride on some other guy’s boat? 😂
Let me talk about some real feelings. When I first got married in 2012 and I bought a flat, I saw my budget balance go to -S$250,000, I felt really sick. Like existence was jail, like I was in an extremely elaborate prison camp that I would have to spend 30 years working in
Intellectually I know (I think?) that that’s not housing loans are supposed to be thought of. You can refinance your loans and whatnot. It’s not literally Owing Someone Money. But it felt like it, and I just got really depressed in the subsequent years. I can’t be alone in this
But I’m not... *worried* any more, not in the same way. And a big part of that is that I have friends. If I need a job, I can ask my friends. If I get evicted, I can crash with my friends. I have, simply by being an earnest reply guy, built myself a true support network
When kids want to be vloggers, youtubers, Instagram hotties, etc - I believe this is part of what they are drawn to. The prospect of people caring about you. The dominant condition of modern civilisation seems to be loneliness. Kids aspire to not be lonely
And when adults are suspicious/wary of this, there is a legitimate concern there too. Which is that it’s extremely easy to fall into a ruse - into thinking people care about you, when they only care about the show that you’re putting on. (Or your ass pics, for eg) https://t.co/kXytr0MbMv
I feel like this is a contemporary form of an age-old tension. Kids used to go to the mall, which parents (legitimately) worried was a degenerate activity. But the kids do it bc they need to develop social skills and status amongst their peers. And those are very important skills https://t.co/XaFKcCfwDY
So like, why haven’t we disambiguated this, as a culture? You don’t want your kids to be obsessive popularity-seeking-at-all-cost zombies with no values or principles - but you surely don’t want your kids to be social outcasts either. https://t.co/2MdtxhS1hH
My working hypothesis cracks me up: we’re scared! we are collectively selfish and self-absorbed, because we’re scared. We are each so consumed by our own fears and anxieties that we fail to appreciate the fears and anxieties of our kids, our partners, our peers https://t.co/KAk6p13H4q
@visakanv This is a fascinating feeling that seems totally rational to me! I can totally imagine feeling this way (mortgage is JAIL with a ball and chain)! but I have NEVER seen anyone articulate it like this emotionally, not even like FIRE blogs
@visakanv Sigh… a lot of the time I look at socially-ept people like you and just feel jealous. To me, making friends feels either incredibly unnatural (I don't even know how I've made the friends I had, and they're fading too), or incredibly patronising. It must start with love I guess?
@visakanv Yeah… thank you for encouraging words. I do not doubt the skills aspect of making friends; I just… find it difficult to put together a narrative for myself to find any will. Like, I can't imagine how I'm not doing things just to "get free stuff" (which is immoral and stops me).