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How Do We Define Friendship In The Age Of The Internet?
Is it still like Barney said, “I love you, you love me, we’re best friends like friends should be.”
If you’re of a certain age, friendship used to be easy. You sat next to your friends in algebra. You went to their houses for sleepovers, you knew their parents’ names. You had a certain pool of people from which to choose, and that was it. Those were your friends.
Later on, you went to college, made different friends. And after you went your separate ways, you called or wrote letters to stay in touch, or you didn’t. And after that, your friends were your co-workers or people you saw a lot at the gym.
And then Facebook came along, and you caught up with the old friends you’d lost touch with. They were posting selfies, and pictures of their families, and pictures of their dogs and cats and houses and cars and boats. They were posting updates about their lives, everything that happened to them, big and small. What they had for breakfast, an interesting leaf they found, racist memes they thought were funny.
Everything changed. You could block people now. And the ones you didn’t block, you didn’t really need to see in person anymore. You could see them any time, right there on…
