Why Can’t We Be Friends?

The Issue is Loneliness

Is there a loneliness epidemic? Definitely. Did the lockdowns make everything worse? Absolutely. The people who orchestrated them need to be taken to trial, which is widespread knowledge. Yet there’s a misconception about how the loneliness epidemic exclusively afflicts men, primarily within the confines of dating. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Making friends as an adult, whatever your gender, feels as demoralizing and depressing as using a dating app. In many ways, it feels even worse.

Nearly half of all Americans report having fewer than three close friends while 12% admit to having no friends at all. People have fewer friends now than they’ve had in decades, and while the lockdowns are an obvious answer as to why things have become this way, they are not the only answer. The lockdowns are over, yet many people continue to socially distance as if they are still occurring. Author Philip K. Dick has a famous quote about this type of behavior: “the empire never ended.” Our guy had this modern era clocked during his sci-fi career in the 60s. While the decline of social media is forcing an online to offline shift, the methodology in which this shift is occurring is jumbled and bewildering.

Seeking Friends - The Despair of Instagram

I’ve recently found myself becoming increasingly offline, seeking more in-person interactions. The digital world has become a shell of its former self, with astorturfed celebrities taking over spaces I once sought to cultivate. Making offline friends was my way to get away from it all and stay sane, yet since I had been forced to temporarily relocate to South Florida, it was especially challenging to get people to meet me in person. This loneliness caused me to make a post on Instagram, outright asking for people to meet with me face-to-face.

The post was as follows:

I’m stuck in South Florida now and really lonely. I’m not looking for meaningless sex or even a romantic relationship, but people to go out to clubs and shows with, or even coffee shops and restaurants. Not text buddies or generic IG likes. Hit me up if you’re actually down to get together in person. We need friends that we see in person to live a fulfilling life. I haven’t seen very many people in person since I left San Francisco, and I’m a huge extrovert. It’s starting to hurt like hell. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

The post got hundreds of likes. A few people sent me DMs, essentially asking me to be their text buddies. One of them actually did want to hang out in person, yet the catch is that we were already friends. There will always be hundreds of people who want to interact with me on Instagram, yet few of them will ever want to meet me in the flesh. It’s becoming clear to me that the endeavor of transitioning newer online friendships into real-world connections is extremely difficult for anyone who isn’t an affluent 22-year-old influencer. Our generation’s time in the limelight has passed. 

People have coupled up, started families, and moved to remote locations. As we grow older and our friends prioritize their spouses and children, we’re pushed into a career-centric mode and compelled to rekindle old bonds. In anti-intellectual towns without cultural activities, having friends becomes essential for your well-being, impacting not only your mental but physical health. If you can’t make new friends who want to see you in person, even on an app as outwardly social as Instagram, you turn to another app. Whether we are looking for partners or friends, we foolishly turn to apps in order to solve our loneliness issues. 

Lacking Friends - The Disaster of Bumble BFF

Most of you probably know about Bumble, a dating app that markets itself as a classier alternative to Tinder. It once had a BFF feature that was part of the dating app itself, yet now Bumble BFF is a stand-alone app for people to make IRL friends. Its primary goal is to foster genuine, face-to-face connections for its users, which is sadly not working as intended. The founders of Bumble BFF attempted to solve the loneliness problem by helping people get out of social distancing mode, yet completely failed in their mission. The empire never ended. The majority of people using Bumble BFF just want to gain IG followers and text buddies.

I met a girl on Bumble BFF who I will call “Vicky.” Vicky and I seemed to share common interests: art, film, philosophy, sci-fi—interests that we were both genuinely passionate about. Neither of us sought to conform to local norms or portray ourselves as people who we weren't. Neither of us had annoying poses of ourselves drinking on the beach or standing under neon signs with cursive pink fonts containing inspirational quotes. We were just two regular women looking for new friends, so we arranged a time and a place to meet. It could not have been more wholesome. 

The day of our meeting, Vicky messaged me, explaining that she couldn't make it. She then sent me five consecutive pictures of her cat. One or two is fine, but five? Why even text me? Just go play with your cat. She then proceeded to like eight of my Instagram photos, two of them dating back to 2016. I told her that I was specifically using Bumble BFF to make IRL friends, emphasizing my preference for in-person meetings.

"Thanks for the likes, but I was actually looking forward to meeting you tonight.”

“Sorry, I’m not feeling well. How was your week?”

I'm not sure why she expected a response or what she wanted to know about my week, but I decided not to engage. Instead of taking the hint, she sent me another picture of her cat, this time with her in the frame. I suppose she was diversifying her portfolio? It was clear that Vicky's interest was in sharing cat photos and being Instagram friends, rather than forming a real-world connection. So, I decided to block her. That was when I began to wonder if this somehow, in a universe next door, made me comparable to Elliot Roger. Had I become… a friendcel?

Block them All 

Something in me had changed. As each new person texted me, pretending to want in-person meetings while actually desiring text or IG interactions, I found myself blocking them. I was maniacally blocking people who just wanted to text and like. Block. Block. Block. Block. Block. I understand that some people don’t even have text buddies, and perhaps I should have been grateful that people wanted to text me at all. I wasn’t.

What I needed was in-person connections, and I was having a lot of trouble finding them outside of my career, especially in South Florida. We can do all sorts of IRL networking related to our professional lives, but the minute we desire to see anyone in person for non-professional reasons we are left completely on our own. We have become the Éponine's of friendship, only there is no French Revolution in the background to accompany our struggle.

Perhaps it was just that I was no longer in a major city, yet the friendcel rage was burning inside of me. More and more people just wanted to text and I did not want to text them back. I needed the IRL friendships. Either you want to see me in person or you’re going on block, unless I’ve known you for a while. I don’t want to spend my life texting with random strangers after decades of using messaging features on social media apps. I don’t even want to spend five seconds texting a random stranger.

My life is remarkably better when I see people IRL. I’ve thrown conferences in San Francisco, produced parties in Los Angeles, and run nightclubs in NYC. Having always been authentically myself, both online and offline, I am simply not a texting person. I like IRL interactions, and I like them a lot. I am never going to text with a random stranger, no matter how lonely I get. I will sooner create an entire cast of characters in my head and venture into self-administrated schizophrenia than text with someone who I have no real chance of meeting in person.

I recommend that anyone who can relate to this make it clear: you will not interact with people who only want to be text buddies or IG pals. Let them know, immediately, that you are interested in meeting them in person. Refuse to be anyone’s text buddy. Get on a call if you want to screen them, but do not play their text buddy games under any circumstance. Set a new standard to cut out the bullshit. Create a no text buddy policy. 

Are Friends Electric? - No

The challenges we encounter in the dating world are, with rare exceptions, the same obstacles we face in the world of friendship. These apps are making everything worse. Do not try Bumble BFF. Do not try Bumble. Do not try Tinder. The people on these apps are looking for electric friends or relationships, and these aren’t the kind of friends or relationships that we need. The people who are not looking for IG followers are looking for text buddies. Many of them have never had any real social media followings, so texting is actually enjoyable to them. Yes, there are thousands of people out there who enjoy texting with strangers, and I disavow them all.

All these apps do is make things worse for anyone who doesn’t enjoy stranger-texting. So, we need to find another way forward. It’s important for us to cultivate as many IRL friendships as we desire to feel socially fulfilled, and we’re nearing the point where we’ll be going completely offline to do this. Here are a few transitional strategies I would suggest for meeting people in person as the shift from online to offline interaction occurs on a massive scale:

• Rekindle old friendships. This is probably the most obvious suggestion on my list. Most people don’t want to make new IRL friends, but old friends may want to meet you in person, especially if they haven’t seen you in a while. Reach out to old friends and see if they want to get together.

• Have new in-person gatherings with old online friends. While new online friends just want to text and/or like, old online friends are often happy to meet up. They aren’t as frozen in lockdown time as this new crop of “friend-seekers.”
  

• Start your own meetups. If you are in a small town this is especially important. Sometimes you just have to be the person to start the meetups and get people together. Make sure you pick a location that everyone can easily access. 

• Join Discord and Telegram channels in your local communities. Pretty much all communication happens on groupchats now. The decline of public life and trust have become so extreme that private groupchats have become the default. If you can’t find any local groupchats, start one yourself.

I feel silly giving out this advice since I’m one of the lonely people, yet I’m doing my part to get out of this situation. I know I’ll eventually make friends who want to meet me in person here, even if it takes a few centuries. I just need to stop using Bumble BFF to do this, and you probably need to stop using Bumble BFF too. Sometimes, you just need to delete the app. Loneliness is not confined to dating; rather, dating is intertwined with loneliness. The quest for new friends who are willing to meet in person is a layer of hell unparalleled by any other period in history. It’s low-energy swiping culture for high-energy extroverts; the ultimate punishment for anyone seeking a platonic connection offline.

Bumble BFF serves as an example of why things are so backwards now, its failure to fulfill its mission being a sombre lesson about modern life. With social media going offline, apps like Bumble BFF will serve us even less in the future than they do now. Not everyone can be an affluent 22-year-old who the whole world wants to pose in a selfie with, though maybe in the future we can all pay to look that way if we’re wealthy and/or desperate enough.

We need better ways to meet and communicate with each other. We need to make this online to offline shift less difficult and burdensome. We need to take up positions of leadership in our cities if the people we want to meet don’t already have a place to gather. Loneliness is not an online dating issue. Online dating is a loneliness issue, and online friendship is a loneliness issue. The issue is loneliness.