Episode: 3904
Title: HPR3904: How to make friends
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3904/hpr3904.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 07:48:39

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3904 for Thursday, the 20th of July 2023.
Today's show is entitled How to Make Friends.
It is part of the series' social media.
It is hosted by Klatu and is about 48 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, this topic is being actively researched, not for production use.
Hey everybody, this is Klatu.
I'm going to talk about a topic that has puzzled me for years, decades, my entire life.
And I feel like I've gathered quite a lot of data lately.
And I think I might have it sort of structured in an algorithm that might be useful to other
people.
The topic is Friendship.
Friendship is really, really tricky.
It's difficult to define.
There's no clear mark of when it starts.
And it often only feels right when it's mutual.
So as a individual, as a human, many of us have some need, and this is to varying degrees,
have some need of making friends.
Friends are social animals, apparently.
And generally speaking, nobody seems to be entirely okay being completely alone all of the
time.
And while you might think, well, that seems like an easy problem to solve, because there
are a lot of people on the planet, so if the only requirement is that you are not physically
alone all of the time, then all you have to do is go to the store.
You are no longer alone.
But I think that for most humans, two varying degrees, simple exposure to another human
isn't quite enough.
You're supposed to be able to interact with some other set of humans in a meaningful way.
And I know a lot of these terms are woefully subjective.
But that's what we have to go on.
So like, scientifically, I guess, or whatever, like sociologically or psychologically, I
don't know.
In some way, people generally agree, if you're human, then you look for some kind of companionship,
some of the time.
If you are what people, I think, tend to call an introvert, then I guess you don't have
to, you're not compelled to go seek out other people as often as you are if you are an
extravert.
Now, there are some interesting variations there as well, of course, because that's the
way humans work, I guess.
But some people say, well, introverts aren't just people who don't necessarily enjoy the
company of other people.
It's people who are an introvert is someone who gets worn out physically, mentally, emotionally
from being exposed to people, whereas extroverts, I think, are people who thrive on that,
get energy by being around other people.
But there are, like some people say, oh, well, I'm an extrovert, but I, or what do they
say?
Like, I'm an introvert, but I like hanging out with people is just that after I hang
out with those people, then I have to go sort of like recover.
And I think there's probably some truth to that no matter what, but for the purpose
of this episode of this discussion, let's assume that whether you're, whether you consider
yourself, whether you've been told by others, whether you're introverted or extroverted,
you're human and, and being 100% alone all of the time is not desirable.
In other words, you think you need a friend sometimes again.
Some here is that the, that the state of friendship doesn't really get, there's not really
a clear moment when that starts.
So if you go to a conference, a technical conference, or a cafe, or a school, or even work really,
you, although I'll get to some of those constant sort of normal thing like school work, things
that happen repetitively, there's a little bit of a catch there.
But if you go to a place and you look at all the people and you think, well, I should,
I should make friends.
That's what I've been told.
I have to go make a friend now.
So where, so you go meet someone maybe, let's say, but like, so when does the friendship
start?
Is it the moment that you say, hey, stranger?
What do you think of the weather today?
Like whatever you say when you go up to a person, and we'll get into some ideas of what
you might say.
But whatever, you know, does the friendship start the moment you meet them?
Or does it start like two hours in after you have been sort of like seeing each other quite
a lot around the conference or the cafe or whatever, or if you're stuck on a bus with
someone sitting next to you?
If you talk through the whole ride from, I don't know, Denver to Albuquerque, then are
you friends?
Like I met someone on an airplane once and much to my surprise, we, we talked like the
entire trip.
It was like a three hour trip or something and we talked.
We had nothing in common, but the, this other person was really like an extrovert, just kept
talking and it was a good conversation.
So I kept talking.
After that exchange, I really felt like felt kind of like, wow, I think I've made a friend.
But of course, I've never seen that person again, don't even remember their name.
So did I make a friend?
Was that a friend, a temporary friend?
Or was that just not a friend?
That was just a really good conversation.
I don't know.
There's nobody declares when that, when that event takes place where friendship starts
at all.
So dating for instance, like if you're dating someone, if you're asking them out to, to,
to go out to eat or to go see a movie or something with the clear intent of let's maybe become
romantically involved, dating is, that's a bit clearer because there, there are markers
that you can use to, to sort of start to suspect that things are progressing towards
a, a pretty clear goal.
And, and without going into too many details, we'll just say the goal is to find a person
who you can hang out with reliably all the time, particularly all day, every day.
Some kind of a partnership, although I don't want to use the word partnership because I'm
going to use that later.
So whatever you call, you know, like, I guess we'll call it marriage, I don't really love
calling it marriage.
Cause let's say marriage is the clear, the clear goal here to it, to a, a dating cycle.
And so you meet the person you talk, I think you're supposed to then ask them out to a,
to a thing like dinner or a movie or dinner and a movie.
And at some point within that relationship, their things happen like you might have your
first kiss.
And that's a very notable event in many relationships.
Oh, remember our first kiss, does that mean that you're now like together?
Like, is that it?
Well, maybe, maybe not.
It kind of depends on where you are on some social mores and things, but, but that first
kiss marks something that that means the relationship has, has transitioned from a phase where you did
not kiss to a phase where kissing, touching your lips together is, is kind of, yeah, like
that's a possibility.
Like maybe we'll do that more often from now on.
So there are, there are things that happen during courtship that communicate to the, the,
the people taking part in this that the relationship has progressed from one stage to the next.
And in friendship, unfortunately, there's not as far as I know, as far as I can tell,
there aren't, there aren't stages of that relationship.
To some people, friendship is a persistent state.
Once you have it, it's, it's just, it's a state you now have forever, unless it's explicitly
dissolved.
But once you have, once you've met someone and you've talked, possibly for as little as
like an hour or two, then in some people's opinion, that would, that would qualify as a
friendship.
And, and that friendship lasts forever.
It's almost as if though, like sort of like once you learn someone's name, you're, you're
friends now forever, unless one of you just blows up and says, look, I'd never want to
see you again.
Don't ever utter my name.
Don't, don't say hi to me when you see me on the street.
Like I am done with you.
I don't know what would have happened in this theoretical situation to make that occur.
But that could happen.
And to some people, friendship is just a persistent thing.
Once you, once you've had some very basic interactions, then you are friends.
I mean, to, to certain people, they even claim that they are friends with everyone, just
automatically, they, they claim everyone in, in their area as a friend, if you're on
the planet, you're a friend of this person, that, you know, whether or not that's true,
whether or not that sort of has the same meaning as the friendship that maybe I'm talking
about, who knows.
But the point is that for some people, friendship is a persistent, instant and persistent state
of being from, from some point onward.
Now for other people, it's something that requires maintenance.
Now, arguably this suggests that there are degrees of friendship based on when you last
spoke to each other, for instance.
So if you meet someone, you talk to them, maybe you talk to them all day, you hang out,
you're at a technical conference, talking, you're talking, you go to lunch together because
you're, you're just talking, you're in this, you're going to the same, uh, presentations
together.
And by the end of the day, you think, you think, yeah, I think we're friends now.
And then you, you both go your separate ways because the conference is over.
But maybe you, you, you continue to email each other.
So you're still friends because you're, you're talking over email with the person that
you talked to in person at an event now.
If whatever you guys had to talk about starts to sort of peter out, then maybe you go a couple
of months without emailing, are you still friends?
It, it, it depends.
And we'll get into definitions of friendship and so on later, but, but for a lot of people,
it would be a no.
You're not friends anymore because you, you aren't communicating actively enough.
But let's say after six months, an idea pops into your head and you think, you know, who
would really like that, that one person that I met.
So you email them.
And so now you're, you're, you're giving maintenance to your friendship.
And so retrospectively, we could say, oh, actually, yeah, they were friends still.
They just hadn't talked in a while.
But they, the, I emailed this person out of the blue after six months, they responded.
I think we're still friends.
And then maybe a year goes by.
Another idea pops into your head, you emailed the person.
They respond.
Looks like you're still friends.
So there's this sort of cycle of, of refreshing and sort of maintaining a friendship.
Now degrees of friendship, such as, such as what I've just described, when did you last
talk to this person?
Oh, I just talked to them last week.
You must be pretty good friends then.
I haven't talked to them in like six months.
Oh, so they're, you know, a friend.
That kind of degree of friendship suggests that there are levels of a friendship.
So you might be a friend to someone.
And then maybe after a certain amount of time, you gain the designation of a close friend.
And then after a little bit more time, maybe you even become best friends.
Is that a thing?
I mean, these are all terms that we've heard.
Yes, they're a friend of mine.
They're such a close friend of mine.
Oh, that's my best friend.
Those are concepts that we all know.
So they, they have to exist in some, in some way.
We wouldn't have just made up those terms.
I mean, those are things that people use to express a feeling and a state of, of, of relationships.
This might be a case of not being able to define a thing until, until you've learned
the thing.
So let's go through how to make a friend first and then we'll circle back around and
see if we can come up with a good working definition of what a friend is.
Okay.
Making friends.
It requires communication.
So it starts.
This process starts by communicating in some way that makes another person feel not unpleasant.
This is tricky because for a few reasons, one of them, one thing about this process is
that you're not supposed to target a specific person for friendship.
This is really stupid and annoying because that's like, I mean, if you're going to go make
a friend, then you have to target somebody, right?
You can't just go out into the world and just be there and hope that a friend is made.
You have to target someone.
But I mean, socially speaking, you're not supposed to like target someone too, too specific
for friendship because the fear is that then you will come, come on too strong.
You will, um, you'll be creepy essentially like you're, you're stalking them.
So if you target someone for friendship too much, then that's considered bad.
So you have to target sort of like the idea of friendship, but you can't have thought
about it too hard in advance with a specific person in mind.
That's an annoying like rule because like I say, like in a, in a, in a way, it goes exactly
counter to the reality of the situation.
The reality is that when you decide, oh, I need a friend, you have to, you have to target
someone in a crowd of people.
You have to figure out which of these 20 people am I, which one of these 20 people am
I going to talk to or I should say, which of these 20 people am I going to talk to first?
And that's the difference.
If you look at a bunch of people and you think, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to find a
friend within this group, then yes, you have to target someone as the first step.
But I think the concept, the idea is that not everyone in that 20 people, I'm just, I'm
using 20 as an arbitrary number here.
That's just pretend like there's 20 people you want one friend, maybe 19 of those people
or well, I should say maybe let's say again, making up numbers as numbers and percentages
here.
Let's say 10 of those people don't want a friend.
They already have enough friends.
So they don't, they, they might talk to you, they might be friendly to you, but they don't
want to engage with you for a long term, like friendship relationship.
And then maybe nine of those people are looking for friends, but you're not it.
You're not, your interests and their interests don't align to such a degree that a friendship
could, could reasonably be expected to be sustained.
And the assumption, therefore, is that one of those people in that crowd is the person
that you're going to become a friend with that they have the right interests.
They are also looking for a friend or maybe not actively, but I mean, they're open to
the idea of friendship.
And so you find that one person in that crowd of 20 people.
So that's the theory.
Like I said, I've made up those numbers.
I've made up those percentages.
It may not be correct.
It might be too much.
It might be too few.
I, I don't know, but that's the concept.
So rather than then targeting one person and thinking, I need to be that person's friend
because they, according to my analysis, they, they would be the best friend for me.
But apparently the reality of the situation is that you can't know that.
You might, you might latch on to someone's sort of personal persona and think, Oh, they're,
they're going to be my friend.
I'm going to make them my friend.
But then once you start talking to them, it turns out that actually you don't really
have anything in common or, or maybe they're just not a really a great person day of hanging
out with one on one.
Maybe they're good in a crowd, but not so great on an individual level or maybe you'll
just hit them at the wrong time.
The moment you decide, I'm going to move in now and become that person's friend happens
to be the wrong moment for them, something else is going on in their life, they can't,
they cannot concentrate long enough on, on communication to establish a friendship.
And so it just, it, it falls apart.
So you don't want to do that.
You don't want to target one person for, for all of the friendship.
You want to just know that you want a friend, but be open to that friend being sort of a
surprise.
Okay.
So now that you've decided you need a, you want to make a friend, you've targeted a group
of people and you have decided and that group of people doesn't actually have to be assembled
in one place at one time.
I'm just using common social situations as examples.
In reality, you could just have it in the back of your head, in the back of your mind.
I should look out for a friend.
And one day you'll go to like a restaurant for breakfast or something and, uh, I don't
know, do you make, do people make friends at restaurants?
I'm not really sure that people make friends at restaurants forget you, forget it.
You went to breakfast, nothing happened, but then you went to, um, another play a game
store for a game and there's a person there and you're, you're talking and you're chatting
and it seems like, oh, this could be the, this could be the friend that I was in the
back of my mind.
I was thinking of, nope, that's not your friend.
They, they, the moment passed like you talked, but, but then like, then you left and you
never heard from them again, they were just passing through town or something, they're
gone.
They're gone from your life.
This is if they didn't exist.
But then later, later, later that day, you go somewhere else where friends are made
and you meet someone and you start talking and that is your friend.
And that wasn't, you know, like I say, that wasn't, didn't all happen at once.
You went to three different places this day that you were, you were open to making a friend,
but it didn't happen until that last place where there was like this one person who ended
up being a friend.
So, okay.
So, how to do this, though, what's the, what's the process?
As I've already expressed, I don't actually know where you make friends and that's, that's
again, why it's really important to just kind of be, just acknowledge to yourself, have
it in the back of your head, in the back of your mind to, to be looking out for friend
opportunities and then you have to kind of, you have to sort of act like you're looking
for a friend.
I mean, you don't have to like have a badge on that says, please help me, I am friendless,
but you, you need to change your default behavior potentially, you know, to, to sort of invite
other people to engage in a friendly way with you.
And by that I mean, you need to like, like I say, communication, friendship requires communication.
And as we see, as we will see, as we go through this process, communication is actually the,
that's the, it's the entire foundation for friendship.
So you have to communicate with people.
And if that's not something that you do normally, then you have to start doing it or else
you will not, it will take you a lot longer to find a friend.
So if you are actively looking for a friend, you want to find a friend, you have to start
communicating with people.
And I have found that one way to do that, and I asked an extrovert about this and they
gave me this advice and I've never forgotten it.
I got this advice like 12 years ago.
Never forgot it and it actually really, really works.
And the secret is to pay someone a compliment.
It could, anybody, lots of people actually, you should try it like all that, you should
try it more often than you think necessary so that you can start getting sort of comfortable
with it.
But if you compliment something that someone has done, then that makes them feel not unpleasant.
You have to do this in a non creepy way.
And that's why I say sometimes practice is good.
Because if you compliment someone in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable, then that's
not what you want.
That's bad.
That's the bad results.
What you want is to compliment someone in a way that makes them feel not unpleasant.
It may even make them feel good about themselves.
That's not your goal though, that's that's that's there.
That's on them.
All you're trying to do is paying someone a compliment in such a way that they feel not
unpleasant.
And the compliment can be anything, it can be the silliest thing.
The example that was given to me was at a checkout line, just compliment the checkout
person on a necklace she's wearing, or he's wearing someone, someone's wearing a necklace,
compliment that necklace.
And I use that because that was literally the example that was given to me.
And then I, like right there, I tried it because like this person told me try complimenting
someone, that person's necklace.
And so we got into line and I complimented the person's necklace and the person like
started talking to me.
Now it's silly because the necklace, like they didn't make the necklace usually very
rarely did the person you compliment on their necklace or, you know, on their choice
of, I don't know, a watch or whatever, like whatever you're complimenting someone on.
They probably aren't even that responsible for it, but they still take pride in it because
they chose that for themselves.
And so they see that as a little victory and they, they thank you for the compliment.
Now sometimes that's as far as the compliment takes you.
That's the communication.
Oh, that's a nice necklace.
Oh, thank you.
That's it.
That, that was the end of the conversation.
And that's okay.
That's a perfectly acceptable conversation, like sometimes if the conversation is sort of
supposed to stop there, if you try to force it further, then that becomes creepy, you
know, because where did you get it?
Who gave it to you?
Why are you wearing it today?
You know, and then they start thinking, well, what, what, what is this?
Am I under, am I being interrogated?
Like, do you think I stole the necklace?
Like what's, what's going on with the necklace?
So, you know, sometimes it's just a statement, an acknowledgement that you've made a statement
and that's it.
But other times, if you compliment someone on something, then they might, they might give
you more information.
Like, oh, that's a really cool sticker on your laptop.
Oh, thanks.
And I got it at the, at Fosedom, the, you know, back in 20, 23.
Oh, cool.
Are you, do you run that software or, you know, whatever, like, then you start, the questions
start, right?
A conversation starts.
And that's a good thing.
Like, that is, that's communication and that, that could be the beginning of a friendship.
That is a very potential, that's a potential good start to a friendship, that, that conversation.
And if that conversation continues for a very long time, then, then, then, I mean, like
I say, some people would call that a friendship, especially if you know their name.
Like, if you learn their name and you've had a conversation with them, in some, in some
people's view, that's a friendship, that, for me, that's not a friendship, but for some
people, I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's a friendship right there.
But it is a beginning of a friendship, even if, even if you have more stringent requirements
for friendship, such as, such as I do, that is a very good start to a friendship, because
that shows that there is some kind of common interest.
And there's, you know, there's, there's a little bit of a danger here, right?
Like, you have to be careful about what you are complimenting, you have to be careful
about why you're complimenting it.
Like if you really are just complimenting someone's necklace, and you don't care about jewelry
at all, like me, like I don't know a good jewelry from a bad jewelry, then, then, you
don't want to, you know, if they start talking to you a lot about this thing that you don't
actually care about, that might not be the greatest basis for a friendship, because, well,
now we're talking about a thing that I, I only talked about because I, because I have,
I had to practice complimenting people today, and you're a person that I had to compliment.
Like that, that's the extent of this conversation for me.
Now, you don't have to tell anybody that, but if, you know, you, you do want to make
sure that you're being, I guess, genuine, when you, when you, when you start conversing
with someone.
I'm not saying it's bad to converse with someone about a thing that you're not interested
in.
That's a great way to learn about stuff, right?
If you start talking to someone about a thing, you know nothing about, and they go into
a five-minute, ten-minute explanation of the significance of that thing, I mean, maybe
you don't care, but hey, that, that actually is kind of interesting, and that conversation
might lead to other things that you are interested in, and then you might find common ground, and
that common ground, whether you had to dig through a bunch of weird stuff that you don't
care about to find it, or whether it's just something right off the bat.
Oh, yeah, we're talking about tech, and I'm super interested in that anyway, so it's
easy.
Yes, we have common, common interest.
Either way, the goal here is to find common ground, because common ground enables repetition.
Repetition is what builds friendship, a repetition of, of, of communication.
So in other words, in order to develop the friendship beyond, oh, I have said, I have
said two words to you, you have said two words to me, if you want to take the friendship
beyond that, then you need to repeat the process.
It's a loop.
You need to communicate to build friendship.
If you communicate and find common ground, common interests, then that is an opening to
further communication, and so you just repeat the communication.
It doesn't always have to start with a compliment.
It can start with a question, you could, you could say, I noticed that you're running
that BSD.
Tell me more about that.
How was it, how hard was that to install on your laptop?
Was it easy?
Does it, does your laptop suspend correctly or, or do you have to do something special to,
to, to get it to, to, to work?
How's the sound on that laptop, an, under net BSD and so on?
So you could just, you know, it can start with a question, it can start with a compliment,
it can start with just a thought, just an arbitrary thought.
I've been thinking about trying void linux.
Have you, have you ever run it yourself?
Oh, that was a question, wasn't it?
But anyway, you get the idea, right?
You can just, you can do, like you can create conversations because of these common interests
and the way that that happens is that you do it more than once.
You've communicated and then maybe you've gone your separate ways and then you continue
to communicate whether it's, when you see each other again at the same spot or because
you have gotten each other's emails or whatever.
Now, this is why friendship is pretty common.
It often develops at, like, work or at school because you're, you're in the same location
around the same people frequently and you end up locating people who have common interests.
They're very often kind of easy to spot too.
Not only are they there all the time, but they often are doing similar things as, as,
as what you're doing.
They might be in the same class as you taking this, this, this, a, a structured educational
course on a specific topic means they're probably somewhat interested in that topic,
even if it's just on an academic level.
Someone working in the same department as you or in a department that you want to work
in eventually.
They're probably interested in that topic.
So friendship tends to be pretty easy to make, to, to create at, like, work or school
or at other frequently repeated events.
And similarly, to be fair, they, they frequently dissolve fairly quickly after like, uh, graduation
or after you've changed jobs or, or whatever, because they are a little bit dependent upon
the repetition, the reliable repetition of being in, in a specific place, doing a specific
thing.
It just makes repetition, repetition's communication easier to, to manage.
Once that goes away, then you're left with sort of the, the requirement to communicate
repeatedly, uh, of your, just without that sort of impetus.
You just have to make that communication happen yourself.
The situation of communication matters, chatting with someone who's being paid to interact
with you like somebody working at a store.
That doesn't really count because in context of that situation, they, more or less, can't
choose to stop communicating with you until you leave the store.
So chatting with someone who has, who has to chat back to you, that's, that's not a
good foundation for a friendship.
It doesn't work.
You'll, you'll, it, this, this is super confusing because it will feel like it works.
You will think, I am really getting along with this person.
No, you're not.
That person is mimicking the, the, that, that easy repetition of communication because
that person works in that store.
If you go to that store every morning for coffee or if you go to that store frequently
to buy a book or a game or something and you see that person frequently, you think you're
making a friend.
But actually what you're doing is you're making a work, uh, a work colleague.
You don't work there, but they do.
And so it's not the same thing.
So be, be careful of those false positives.
Another thing that doesn't count is when you are chatting with any, anybody who has anything
to gain by chatting with you, well, that's, that's a, that's a tough one because I mean,
we all want, we, we all want to gain something from each other, right?
I mean, that's, we're all, we all need something from each other.
That's the point of friendship.
But what I'm, what I'm saying is like if it's an intern at work, you know, like their
paycheck could be affected possibly or at least in their eyes, maybe even incorrectly.
But in their eyes, if they get to know you better, they might get into that, into your,
onto, onto your team and, and wouldn't that be great?
Then they would, then they would get a regular job at that, at that place or if this person
from this team transferred over to that department, um, they would be happier at their job.
And so getting, being friends with you could influence things later on.
Like if you ever had to suggest someone for a job opening or something like that.
So in other words, be careful when you are chatting with someone where there is any
kind of just really, even just the barest power dynamic.
It's really, really dangerous and it's super confusing.
It, it really is because you may not think of yourself as having like power over someone.
But if in their eyes you do, then you functionally do.
And so that, that, the communication, the repetition of communication, it, it'll fool you.
It'll, it'll, and, and it can be dangerous.
So it's, it's a little bit better to just focus on finding friends really outside of the
obvious places, like the places that you would normally go to find friends or that you,
you might think, oh, this would, this will, this will make for easy pickings.
I'm at school.
I could easily talk to someone here or I'm at work.
I can easily just be careful of those places, not, not because, not, not because you necessarily
have power over someone in, in those places.
But just because there is kind of that forced repetition.
Now that is not to say that, that, that it doesn't work.
It does work.
I have made friends at work and the friendship has persisted after a job change.
I have made friends at school and that friendship has persisted after graduation.
Not that I ever graduated, but you know what I mean.
So it does, it, it can happen.
It does work.
I'm just saying be aware that there may be an added dynamic there that could complicate
things.
Okay.
So you've met somebody.
You've talked to them.
You've talked to them repeatedly.
You have repeated, you've, you're in a loop of communication.
Maybe it happens every day.
Maybe it happens once a week.
Maybe it happens.
It happened a lot for one weekend and then just happens over email.
Whatever the situation to speed up the friendship process.
And I mean, at this point, you can already say, again, we don't have a definition, but
you could say your friends like, oh, that person, yes, that's my friend.
I met them one weekend and then I emailed them every once a month or, ah, that's my
friend.
I see them every day and we talk whatever your qualifications for whatever your definition
is of a friend, you could, you could start laying claim to that now.
And don't worry, I'm going to get to a debt of more solid definition later.
But if you want to sort of develop that friendship further, then you can try inviting the person
to interact with you on something with a clearly defined goal.
You like coding?
I like coding.
Would you care to collaborate on a script that would, ah, help me find my raspberry pie
on my network?
I've got four pies.
I need to know which one is which.
Let's work on one of those, ah, blinky light scripts to alert me of, of which raspberry
pie is which.
You like fishing?
I like fishing.
Would you like to go fishing until we have extracted a fish out of a body of water, one
fish each?
Or however many fish the goal is.
I wouldn't ever do that.
I'm vegetarian.
But I mean, people do fish, I think, um, there are other things.
You like bowling?
I like bowling.
Let's go bowling.
Whatever the activity is, if you invite someone to go do an activity with a finite start
and a finite end, then you are opening opportunities for continued communication.
And remember, communication is the foundation of friendship.
This can be difficult sometimes because when you're doing an activity that you both
claim to enjoy in theory, that activity should be sufficient to further the friendship,
right?
But actually, no, the activity isn't what's building friendship.
This is not intuitive, but the activity itself is not building friendship.
It is actually only building a partnership.
So if you get together to do something, you're essentially sort of volunteering to help
one another do a thing that you enjoy, that you both enjoy.
Let's get together and do some woodworking.
Great.
We're both using each other's power tools.
We're probably learning tips and tricks from each other.
That is a great foundation for a partnership.
You are my woodworking buddy.
We will learn from each other and get better at our craft.
Get together and do live coding together.
Great.
We're learning from each other.
Here's my tool chain.
What's your tool chain look like?
Oh, that's cool.
Oh, I'd never heard of that IDE.
Maybe I'll try that now.
How do you build a package for your application?
What do you use?
Raven or Gradle or whatever the situation is, that builds a partnership and that's very
significant difference to friendship.
Friendship is what is getting built through what is it?
Communication.
During that activity.
So the activity is an excuse.
It's a red herring.
The activity doesn't actually matter.
And you'll see that.
You'll probably experience it when you meet someone and you're doing things together.
You'll think, wow, we're such good friends.
We have fun.
No matter what we're doing.
And that's good.
That's a good thing.
That's exactly what you want out of a friendship because that means that the friendship is sort
of transcending, if you will, not to be too sort of subjective and mystical about it.
But it's transcending the physical activities that you're engaging in, which is good because
as I say, some activities will trick you into thinking that you're making friends when
you're not.
A common one would be, you know, work friends, school friends, friends at, you know, at
the bar.
You're talking to the bartender.
You're such great friends.
Well, sure you are.
The bartender has to be your friend.
Like that's the job.
So if you can get into an activity where it doesn't matter what you're doing, you're
still having fun together and still interacting and communicating, that's a good foundation
for a friendship.
And that's really it.
That's how to make a friend.
You find, you go out and you communicate to people.
And someone communicates back for a couple of sentences like you have a proper conversation
then for some people, that's the start of friendship.
Now for other people, they need a little bit more than that.
And I think most people honestly need a little bit more than that.
So repetition, you want to talk to that, you want to communicate with that person more
than once.
You want to communicate with them frequently.
You want to make sure that they're not feeling unpleasant.
Are they comfortable communicating with you?
Are they also happy to be communicating with you more than once?
Assuming everyone's happy in the situation to communicate, then you just keep communicating.
You build up communication through repetition, repeated communication.
And then to develop that further to sort of solidify it as it were, you try doing activities
together that permit communication during the activity.
Assuming you have shared interests, those activities are probably going to be fairly easy
to find.
And they should, ideally, just kind of happen more or less as a natural result of the communication.
You're talking about coding.
Hey, you know what?
I've been working on this one project.
Why don't we get together some time and work on the project together, whatever.
So none of this really has defined friendship yet.
We've made a friend.
We understand that friendship is built on communication.
But we still don't exactly know when that friendship starts, when it would end.
If it ends, what the friend is, like why there is a friend.
So that's a little bit tougher to work out.
But I think I more or less have a working framework for a definition.
I don't have a definition.
I have a framework for a definition.
Unfortunately, there's just no clear point during this process that you'll know that you've
made a friend or you'll be one of those people, like I said, who just thinks that you've
made a friend.
The moment someone talks back at you.
Neither of those two things is wrong.
I'm just saying it's very difficult to figure out, to tell one from the other.
Like oh, we had a conversation.
We're friends now versus oh, you know what?
We've been talking for like three months pretty much every other day.
I think we're friends now.
Like what's the difference between those two things?
How can they, how can both of those things be true?
Well, the secret is that you have to define what a friend is to you.
And that's the goal you work toward.
I'll give you some examples.
Maybe for you, you've decided a friend is someone to hang out with on Sundays.
You got nothing better to do on Sundays?
A friend would be a person you could call up or text or email and say, hey, let's do this
thing on Sunday.
Now, if that is your goal, if that's your, if that's what a friend would look like to
you, well, now you know what to work for.
You're looking for a friend where friend equals someone to hang out with on Sunday.
Now that that's, that's limiting, you know, the scope of what is acceptable to you.
So you'll have to communicate with people.
You'll have to find people probably you'll sort of make, you'll make friends or whatever
they are.
Like you'll make acquaintances with a lot of people until you find like the person who's
available to hang out on Sundays.
And along the way you may realize, Sundays was too specific.
Like I've got, I've made a couple of acquaintances and they all, several of them seem to be available
to hang out on Thursday night.
But Sunday has seemed to be pretty busy for everyone other than me.
So you might have to revise your definition of what a friend is, maybe a friend is someone
to hang out with on not Sunday, Thursday afternoon, Thursday evening, whatever.
So the definition needs to remain a little bit, a little bit flexible, potentially or not.
And you just make all the acquaintances you, you make on the way to finally finding that
one person who has a lot of similar interests as you do, who is fun to communicate with and
who is available on Sundays to hang out.
Now you have your friend, maybe a friend is someone you can call when you've got free
time to kill.
Doesn't have to be Sundays.
It could be any day, but it needs to be someone who's generally available when you are bored.
And once again, you could either decide, okay.
That was, that's too specific, like whenever I'm bored is just, there's no predicting
that.
Therefore, it's unreasonable for me to expect a friend to sort of exist that can be available
any time I am bored.
All right, maybe, maybe what I really mean is that a friend is someone who's fun to
hang out with and when they're available when I am bored, it's, it's great to have them
around.
Or maybe a friend is just someone to play the video games with online.
They don't even have to be available in real life for real, you know, real life physical
activities.
They just, you just need someone online who can join your league or your guild or whatever.
They're called on in video games and, and you, you just, you play video games together
online.
That could be your definition.
That would be fine too.
Maybe a friend is someone you can call day or night whenever you need help.
Maybe that's, that's your requirement.
You want a real friend, you want a best friend, a close friend.
You want someone you can call whenever, just like on TV.
You call them, they drop everything, they, they help you out.
Again, that's a pretty specific thing and, and you may be looking for that person for
a very long time.
You might have to go through lots and lots and lots of acquaintances or, you know, low
level friends before you find that person who's like available any time, day or night,
to help you out, whatever.
But I mean, if that's your requirement, then that's your requirement.
Or rather, if that's your definition, then that's your definition.
Maybe a friend is someone who has come over to dinner, you know, actually come over to
dinner at your house, met your family and who you see at least once a month.
So in other words, friendship, there is no official definition.
You get to define it yourself.
Your definition may differ, differ from the, the other person's definition though.
So you might say, hey, we're best friends and they might say, no, I already have a best
friend.
A good friend, you're a close friend, whatever, but you're not my best friend.
That's okay.
The definitions don't have to be the same.
I mean, they might have to be the same in order for them to meet your requirements of
what a, of what a friend is.
So if you say, well, I don't call anyone a friend or at least my best friend unless they
can hang out on, on Friday nights.
If, if there's someone and they're not available on Friday nights, they're not my friend.
That's just, that doesn't, that's not good enough for me.
Well, if, if their definition of a friend is someone who just calls them occasionally
on weekends, then there's, there is a mismatch there and, and you're going to have to figure
out how that sort of, how that aligns, how, how does that work out?
Does that work?
It may not work.
It may be the, your expectations of, of, of, of a friend doesn't match what another
person.
However, friendly you have been to each other, it doesn't match what they are willing
to put into a friendship.
And so they're, it's, it's just never going to quite work out.
The point is that you get to make the definition.
I, I guess what I'm saying is, or what I'm trying to imply here is that a wider definition,
a looser definition is probably better than a very strict definition.
But at the end of the day, you probably do have a strict definition for, for what exactly
you want.
And you shouldn't lose sight of that.
But you should also never try to force a, a, a friendship into meeting those requirements
because that's not going to work.
That'll, that actually could even strain and possibly break the friendship.
Why are you never available on Friday night?
I call and you never pick up.
Right.
Cause I'm, I'm at the, at the, my volunteer gig on Friday, every Friday, forever.
The, the, I will never be available on Friday.
Well, does that mean that you can no longer, you, you can't be friends?
Well, if you're only definition of a friend is someone who's available on Friday night
and, and the person who you've been communicating with is not available on Friday night, then
yes, you cannot be friends.
That is an incompatibility.
So opening up that definition of what a friend is is probably good.
Do you have to consider literally everyone you meet, like some people do, a, a friend?
Not necessarily.
Like that's up to you.
You can, you can make it a little bit more constrained than that.
But it is ultimately a perceptual thing.
You get to choose who you call a friend, you get to choose what needs in your own life
other people fill through their friendship.
I think probably the idea that friendship is, I don't know, as cliche as it sounds like
a spectrum or a buffet, that's probably kind of accurate.
Like different people who you have met and communicated with are likely to meet different
requirements for you.
And I think generally that's probably fine.
I don't think that's a problem usually.
There may be some friends that you have that play games, board games and tabletop games,
and then other friends who do not.
But they, they, they're the movie buffs.
They love movies more than anything.
So they're great to hang out with on movie night, but you don't invite them over to the
board game night because they hate that sort of thing and so on.
So you'll have different sort of like different kinds of friends, potentially.
And that's okay.
And I mean, it's the 21st century as well.
You're likely to have friends in real life and you're likely to have friends online.
And one is not necessarily better than the other, you know?
I mean, they're, they're, they're, they're a little bit different.
But literally some of my closest friends, I have never met face to face.
That's kind of weird or it would have been back in the early 20th century.
But in, in the 21st century, that's normal and that's fine.
So I guess what I'm saying after an hour of talking about friendship and what it is is
don't overthink it.
Um, look at me.
I don't overthink it at all.
Friendship is communication.
Friendship is defined by you and friendship is defined by the other person.
Sometimes those definitions align pretty well and that friendship gets developed in different
ways.
It might develop at different rates at different times too.
You might go a whole year and barely ever talk to this person and then suddenly you start
talking to them again and it's like you never stop talking and it's great.
And then another year goes by and you don't really, and that's fine.
That kind of unsteady sort of pace is okay as long as everyone is okay with it.
Ultimately, it's communication.
It is repetitious and earnest, an honest communication.
That's the foundation of friendship.
The logistics can be confusing because there are lots of fuzzy definitions out there.
It can be very difficult to figure out how you're supposed to kick off the friendship process
and then once you've kicked it off, you're not even sure if it is kicked off.
Have we started being friends yet?
I don't know.
It's difficult.
Like I say, just come up with a definition of what a friend looks like to you, not physically,
just like emotionally, like what is a friend in your definition and move towards that
goal consistently.
Eventually, you'll reach that goal.
You'll have someone who fills that definition for you.
Then you can come up with different definitions or you can just keep adding people to the
same category.
It's up to you.
If you have experience making friends or thinking about friendship or if you're an extrovert
with lots of success over how friends are made, feel free to share them in a hacker
public radio episode.
I think it's a fascinating topic.
I think gathering data on those interactions and what interactions produce friendship is
a fascinating thing to try to reverse engineer, honestly.
I think it's kind of an interesting topic and a lot of people have a lot of problems
with it.
I think overthinking it probably can be detrimental, but at the same time, giving it some thought
can be empowering as well because then you know exactly what it is that you're going after
and you know why and you know not to panic when you're not really sure.
Are we friends?
Are we good friends?
Are we just kind of acquaintances like where are we?
What are we going to call ourselves here?
Who cares?
It's just you have a definition of a friend work towards that definition.
Thanks for listening.
Talk to you next time.
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