I kept seeing the "average American has three friends" thing go around my timeline without seeing the original and so I went to go and look and it's SO MUCH WORSE than I imagined.
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I guess you are more average than I am. Like trying to explain about ratios and how a county can have 3 and half boys in poverty. Poor Horatio. A half a boy. Kinda hard to forget that.
When you get to the point when all of your friends are dead, and no one is left to attend your funeral. DON'T DIE
also is it talking about close friends or just friends? because if I had to pick my BEST friends, there's probably three of those (the ladies I invited to my birthday mani/pedi festivities), but I have other friends!
I didn’t hang out with anyone outside of class unless it was a sport or like senior year when I got dragged to people’s homes and the prom. And when people left their phone numbers in the yearbook I never called them lol and I certainly didn’t leave mine. I like my independence, simple as that.
I seriously feel bad for the guy. He paused and sounded so nervous, like he knew deep down it was a personal cry for help... then gulp, and he went for it
I'm fairly sure she's stirring mac and cheese with somebody else, don't feel sad for her. She signed up for the DAP with him, but there're always... options.😉
I grew up in small town Christianity, & hoo boy, they could teach a masterclass in How To Be A Dirty Little Sinner Fingering Everyone Else's Wives Pies. Heh. The first dildo I ever saw was in the bedroom of the Baptist preacher who rained down hellfire every Sunday. I asked his daughter what it was!
I think it's very telling that the internet usually makes things so much worse than they originally were but in his case it's pretty much always the opposite no shitposter could do it justice
Yeah, that’s really telling about him. I too am an introvert, yet had to cut off the guest list for my recent birthday party because I’d hit the point of “if all these people I love dearly show up, I’m going to spend the whole time hiding under the bed” before I ran out of friends.
I am a huge introvert. My wife and I planned as cheap a wedding as we could so we could invite all our friends, and had about 140 guests. We both have big families, but still...
I consider myself a hermit. I have fewer friends than anyone in my sphere (except one guy who is very clearly being emotionally abused by his wife and has been intentionally isolated) and I have more than 3 close friends.
If you can, help him get out, my son was in abusive relationship it was terrible. She was a dangerous psychotic. We are just thankful they never had a child.
Before the pandemic I had more than three friends. But since 2020, my friends have dwindled because I'm still masking and they do not. Three friends I see in-person would be an increase from what I have now. Disabled people have been forgotten.
Even if there are people who have only two friends, AI doesn't help with that. It's like saying "People have fewer than two meals a day, so we'll be providing them plastic in the shape of food to eat instead."
I’m an introvert too, but I have friends I’ve known since college (I’m in my 70s), and people I have worked with over the years. I don’t see them all the time because most of them have dispersed all over the world. But we still stay in touch even if it’s not that often and I consider them friends.
other than my partner and people i have to interact with at work i have no one i talk to and no close friends. i used to have a bunch but sometimes life just really turbo fucks your ability to be have a social life or communicate, it sucks.
I feel you on this. My flavor of AuDHD is so particular that I get as exhausted by almost everyone (and they probably are exhausted by me). I have a handful of folks I vibe with, but they're either online friends or ones I don't get to see often.
Yeah. A close friend is very different from a casual friend/buddy/pal. I have more of the latter, but I can barely keep up; I dropped completely off the radar for years. Introversion and depression; not a good combo.
But a chatbot isn't gonna fit the role of close friend, the idea is laughable.
Seriously. I consider myself pretty unlikable. I’m awkward, often prickly, and an introvert to boot. Even so, I have about 6 non-work friends I regularly talk to, and a bunch more I don’t talk to or see as regularly, but still cherish. Zuck’s insisting everyone is as much a loser as he is. Sad.
People are surprised that I'm at all introverted--theatre kid, podcaster, etc--but I love to stay in and recharge for those things. And I have dozens of good friends, people I know I could count on in an emergency. It must be awful to imagine most people have fewer than three and think that normal.
That’s what I think a lot of people don’t get about us introverts: we don’t necessarily hate being social. It just takes a lot of energy out of us in order to do so. So we have to recharge lots, and don’t mind being alone to do so.
My hate of even the idea of doing theatre is a separate thing :)
Right? The roughest time was in grad school when periodically I had to be like "hey guys, can't make it this week, have to pick food or enough gas to make it out there."
I'd much rather have a non-burning planet and enough money to visit friends.
Friends can help you move! Friends can feed your cat when you're out of town! Friends can invite you to do things in person, giving you a reason to leave your house!
Friends can say something brilliant when you're in a jam that makes you immediately relax and feel less stressed. Conversely, friends can be so happy for you and with you when something wonderful comes your way.
Friends will lift you up when you're down, go on adventures with you, and expand your world. And sometimes when you're being a jerk they'll pull you aside and tell you to stop it. AI is just there to repeat something more generic than a human could generate.
Also friends are there not just for you, you’re there for your friends. Ideally it’s not a transactional thing, it’s a we help and love each other thing. Something AI can never do or be.
I think you misunderstand. AI will be promoted as the replacement for friends.
And people will actually think it's better because real people are messy. Plus online interactions can certainly suggest a lot of people are actually asses when they can get away with it.
I wanna push back on 2 here because I think AI absolutely *can* be trained to produce a simulacrum of friendship without the substance
And yeah, most people don't want or need anything like that, but the people who do are isolated & vulnerable & should be encouraged to connect with real people
Trying to make a connection with a real person that turns into an actual friendship is hard -- so AI becomes alluringly convenient.
Plus they can simulate a better friend and listener than anyone except maybe a seasoned crisis line worker who doesn't know you or a shrink.
Living wage, better working conditions, hell, let's throw in a ubi combined with rent control. Those would all GREATLY reduce stress, which reduces the chances of a non-zero amount of people being isolationist, which thus increases being with people.
People want the means to live the good life. Living wages less working hours, more free time, public spaces & opportunities for human encounters, human engagements, & human interaction. pitiful losers like Zuck wanna force everyone to be isolated so they can be mind controlled by AI for profit&power
AI friends are fundamentally not friends because they are not people. Look, I'm very probably autistic. I pack bond with a lot of inanimate things. You cannot have a bond and friendship and connection with a slew of words. It's parasocial at best.
I have maybe 3-5 close friends but a lot more random friends from different walks of life. And I'm an introvert who works from home. Even though we mainly text, an AI holds no appeal for me, especially since I deleted Threads & left FB because I found the social element bad for my mental health
Can't imagine a Meta AI has my best interest at heart. Especially if I get political, talk about queerness or mental health. On Threads their AI kept asking me if I needed su*cide intervention resources and I found it humiliating
Geez!!!! I am also an introvert who works from home. Pretty much just use FB for weather (don’t get broadcast tv coverage where I live), some craft stuff, and local news like what’s on fire today (from local fire departments). I don’t interact with people I know there anymore
Time is the thing. Money is a placeholder for power. If you're at the bottom of the power hierarchy you get no money, no time. You feel shit, worthless - because capitalism needs you to, so it can steal your time for low wages. It takes time to make/be friends.
I want to know how to define friend. Is this someone you hang out with outside of work or school or is this mean could call at any time of need and they would be there? Do they have to someone you communicate regularly with? ND sometimes don’t talk for years and we’re just as close.
As someone who has studied friendship and read a lot on how to define/operationalize it… the only way this could possibly make sense is if it’s counting only close/best friends, and not more casual friends.
This is pretty accurate, and like - there's also different ... types of friends. Like is this AI bot going to help me move my couch or be able to pick me up from the airport? Will it want to go to the movies on Saturday? Play a game friday? TL;DR screw zuckerberg
"Hmm, it seems like as we've corporatized the internet and lobbied for policies that exacerbate wealth stratification people are feeling increasingly isolated and alone. I know! We'll make online robot friends for them to talk to!"
I text grad school buddies in different time zones when I miss them and they are likely to be awake and not at work. Hopefully, they are not using an AI to talk to me
This is how I learn where that came from and yeah unless you’re using a pretty rigid definition of “friend” and only counting people you’re currently actively in regular contact with, three still seems way low
I'm an introvert, I hate leaving the house, I'm totally awkward and I somehow have a lot more than 3 friends. Like I would say 6 very close friends and then many more casual friends.
Did they define what they mean by “friend”? Because I’m autistic and I’m pretty sure I have more than that unless they mean like super close friends, would bury a body for you, type friends.
Last week I had a sudden Need To Be Elsewhere and the first-pass immediate list of people that came to mind to ask was over a dozen people in four separate countries.
It all blows my mind, especially the whole “male loneliness epidemic”.I’ve always had small but incredibly tight friend groups. I still talk weekly with my best friend from high school and my law school friend group still gets together at least once a week, 8 years after graduating.
I had lots of friends. But, we partied hard. Really hard. If I want to see most of my oldest friends now, I have to go to the cemetery. I cherish the remaining ones, but goddamn has my circle ever shrunk over the last 10 years
By "fewer than three" I'm almost certain he's referring to some sort of study that came out with a fractional number between 2 and 3 as an average. Otherwise you'd just say 2 or 3. But that kind of a study result does seem deeply at odds with the experience of me or anyone I know.
If you literally count only people I am not related to whom I currently talk to regularly and have gone on road trips with and still liked after many hours cooped up in the car together as “friends”, the most restrictive definition I can come up with, I’m still at 6.
…wait fuck I forgot to include my bandmates like a dumb add, make that 9. But still 6 even if the reason for the road trip has to be purely for vacation.
Anyway yeah I’m an extrovert & call quite a few people friends (my definition: people I talk to &/or hang out with regularly for completely voluntary social-enjoyment reasons) but there’s NO WAY the “average American” has less than three friends.
i, a friendly hermit, have 2 friends on my little mountain and there are only like 10 houses here
like, are we besties? no but close enough that when i got a (THANKFULLY ERRONEOUS) alert my dog had escaped while i wasn't home, i called one of them to go help look for my dog and he ran right out!
Which means, statistically, that you're friends with like 10% of the population of your area (assuming an average of two people per house). A percentage that in introvert parameters is pretty high!
Absolutely feel you there. I love going out and connecting with others. But I will occasionally zone out at a gathering and then I need to be alone decompressing for a few hours afterwards, and a quiet day if possible after.
I know. I'm an introvert and three is a crazy low number; I have many more. Not only do I not want a colosseum of buddies, I really, really don't want an AI buddy.
I have more than three also and I’ve even purged a ton over the years. I feel social media in many cases drag relationships past their shelf life. I found it cathartic to let those relationships and free up bandwidth for less but better ones.
Friend based social media has screwed with our heads.
I think I know what study he got this from. It’s a textbook example of how not to design your survey. They asked people to list who they go to for advice. Then the next question made them give a giant invasive list of all those people’s real addresses.
I have a few friends I can call and go visit or have over for coffee, and I have 5 for whom I'd take a bullet. I think Zucc has "people" and not even one friend he could call at 4AM.
I am an introvert probably have a thousand friends. I don't talk to them all every day tho and it's probably because I am charming and funny but extremely antisocial and it's hard for me to engage with people all the time. Idk people usually like me or fucking hate me
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I send my annual First of May meme to like half a dozen friends I'm regularly in touch with who are also Jonathan Coulton fans. I once had three separate birthday parties in order to accommodate multiple friend groups and schedules.
Unless he means "On Facebook". I deleted my account in 2016.
I would say I have three to four real, true friends. And that's plenty. What I have a lot more of are friendly acquaintances, but a real, true friend is different and you don't need a ton--especially if you're an introvert! I think the problem is he doesn't actually know what a friend is.
The level of wtf with that guy is just...yeah. Like, he obviously doesn't comprehend ethics at all and now thinks a shitty plagiarism machine = better than real friends. He must be the absolute worst person to have to interact with about anything.
I can't see it as anything other than using AI to manipulate lonely people, who probably have 700 facebook friends but facebook won't let you see their posts
Wait are people actually denying this? The average is often put at 3-5 friends, but people exaggerate or have very lose definitions of friendship. Since those with fewer friends are less visible, it skews perceptions.
But there are reasons to think, and the suggestion that folks should supplement their 3 IRL friends with 12 AI "friends" is absolutely among them, that the awkward boy in question never grew up and definitely should not be among the most powerful people on the planet.
Please tell me that spouses and partners count as extra friends. The idea of having no more than 2 friends and one of them being your partner feels very isolating. Heck, it is isolating no matter what.
Since you brought it up, this meme keeps showing groups of three people. But that illustrates having two friends. They should be showing foursomes, no?
I feel like the numbers are skewed by these obscenely wealthy divorced techbro weirdos being in the negative millions of friends, which throws off the count for the rest of us
I've said it before, but the way facebook is structured makes it obvious that none of the higher-ups have ever had real friends. They only see people as objects to be used until they no longer have any 'value'.
It's really the only way that you're able to amass obscene wealth. You have to be an utter narcissist who believes everybody around them is there in their service. Anyone who gets in the way needs to be pushed down. Including their own families.
I have zero close friends, and I couldn't be happier. I find that people are generally OK when you meet them, but once you get to know them, you learn all their selfish bullshit. I like keeping my psychosis to myself. At least when I don't bathe, wash the dishes or do the laundry, it will all be me.
This sounds dangerous. What is your friend going to convince you you need to buy, who to vote for. Wake up people he is doing this not for, but for money and more influence. Propaganda is a powerful weapon of control, especial when reinforced subtly by social contacts you trust.
I have what I think of as a Venn Diagram of friends: writing/publishing friends, work friends, former town(s) & friends there, all of which add up to a lot more than 3. Maybe it's all in the definition of 'friend'?
My mother told me that I, like most people, would be lucky to have 3 good friends over the course of my life. I laughed at her because I had DOZENS of friends!
I'm in my 60s and mother is dead but , she was right.
maga also did a number on friendships. people i thought i knew, thought we were friends suddenly felt free to voice racist beliefs. i had to breakup with them after spending 6mo trying to help them see their racism.
Severe/chronic illness sadly can weed out several friends. Luckily none of my close friends went maga, more high school friends that had become simply FB friends.
it's also very funny to be the leading figure in social media for the past few decades, where people allegedly make and maintain friendships on your platforms, and then turn around and go "huh, looks like no one has any friends... I wonder why that is?"
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When you get to the point when all of your friends are dead, and no one is left to attend your funeral. DON'T DIE
because that makes me feel like I'm actually not socially inept at all lmao
It will be plenty then, too.
If I lose a few, that will leave me with... plenty.
Also people should really talk about medians instead of averages.
I hate the sand
Y'all I am an introvert. I don't want a colosseum of buddies. That sounds awful.
I have a lot more than three friends?
i am intensely introverted.
other than my partner and people i have to interact with at work i have no one i talk to and no close friends. i used to have a bunch but sometimes life just really turbo fucks your ability to be have a social life or communicate, it sucks.
But a chatbot isn't gonna fit the role of close friend, the idea is laughable.
Yes and they make those by being relaxed and happy, something they get from having a living wage and free time!
My hate of even the idea of doing theatre is a separate thing :)
I'd much rather have a non-burning planet and enough money to visit friends.
1. If you can't make friends, an AI is not going to help solve that problem.
2. Friendship is built & created through interactions with people which releases oxytocin & dopamine. AI doesn't do this
3. We don't need more "it's all about me" people
Just wait for them to influence AI learning.
And people will actually think it's better because real people are messy. Plus online interactions can certainly suggest a lot of people are actually asses when they can get away with it.
It doesn't change what I said. If it is difficult to make friends, an AI friend will not help.
People can be assholes. People have to be held accountable for how they interact with others.
They have to be taught how to interact with others. Socialization is a learned behavior
can stimulate dopamine.
The bonding hormones increase with living things interacting between each other and the stress hormones decrease.
Human to human, human to other animals.
https://edit.sundayriley.com/why-friends-are-important/
And yeah, most people don't want or need anything like that, but the people who do are isolated & vulnerable & should be encouraged to connect with real people
Technology cannot replace relationships & the chemical reactions in a humans brain.
An emotional support animal for bonding would be better than AI
Friends matter, but it’s a little higher up on the hierarchy.
Plus they can simulate a better friend and listener than anyone except maybe a seasoned crisis line worker who doesn't know you or a shrink.
Or stuff that would be better dealt with if the user has money/time/access to real therapy.
Maybe Mark means HE has fewer than three friends, and is projecting onto the rest of us.
Zuck’s social life is not representative of the average American, he’s just particularly unlikeable as a person.
I’d believe that of the average techbro tho.
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/25/1208572681/friends-friendship-meet-up-research-pew-health-benefits
like, are we besties? no but close enough that when i got a (THANKFULLY ERRONEOUS) alert my dog had escaped while i wasn't home, i called one of them to go help look for my dog and he ran right out!
10 odd years ago I realized that was all I really needed so I ditched everyone else and been happier sense
I DO NOT WANT an AI "friend" lmao
and I use AI *extensively* for work - hell I just started a job *building* AI
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Friend based social media has screwed with our heads.
I am okay with this. 😂
Do I want AI friends though? No. No I do not.
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Unless he means "On Facebook". I deleted my account in 2016.
If we include online chats it's probably half a dozen daily.
Lonely and awkward little boys whose best friend when they were growing up was their PC should not be among the most powerful people on the planet.
Some awkward boys get their act together and become well-rounded emotionally mature people. It happens.
Not that you're wrong in any particular.
Just that there is a descriptive term for them
thinking about it maybe it'd make more sense if people with actual SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP skills ran the social networks
I'm in my 60s and mother is dead but , she was right.
then i got very sick
friends just dropped off bc i couldn't leave the house. no one can bother visiting the sick
i have my ex husband and a friend from childhood left. and my dog. she's the best. 1/
Not just friends
Ya I had a family member tell me because I posted happy photos of me and my ex bf, no way he could of abused me. Uhhhhhhhhhhhh
That's not how this works
I have two moribund FB accounts, I only really used them for stupid games (that I paid into bc chump).
but at one point my former neighbor tried to friend me.
she bullied me on and off all through school. her family are actual Nazis & she's a MAGA fundie.
but, "friends" now
A true sign that our country has become sick.