Did You Know that Friendship was a Fungible Commodity?

I wonder, can you purchase friends at the Applebee’s Salad Bar?

Bobo* Brooks, Washington Faust:

There Are Social and Political Benefits to Having Friends

You know what I hate?

Moochers.

Yeah, you heard me, dirty filthy moochers stealing up my hard-earned tax dollars what with their unamerican whines of “but I need to eat” or “I don’t want to die here on the streets”. Oh boy fucking hoo, what about my stock portfolio, that’s what I say.

You know, I used to mock overprivileged assholes on this blog who seemed to think that everyone would become just as sociopathic, bigoted, egocentric, and short-sighted as them if only they were able to tug hard on their bootstraps and magic their way into that full-time middle-class employment that is totally on every street corner just waiting for someone white go-getting enough to seize it.

But now that I’ve caught that elusive golden snitch and just now seized a full-time teaching job with nothing but hard work, moxie, and good-ol’ inherent worthiness, I realize the folly of my former socialist ways. Sure, this random conflux of events is somewhat… clouded by the desperation that preceded it and the grim knowledge that a bit of crucially timed luck is the only thing that separates me now from the homeless woman hiding under a blanket in a street alcove or the tragedy of Kate von Roeder. I mean, it’s not like I can erase the way I had to casually discard an important dream and retreat to a dangerous self-loathing head-space to try and put together some form of panicked short-term survival. Nor can I avoid catching a glimpse of the still-healing scar all up and down my left arm from a recent wake-up-warning suicide attempt only foiled by gross incompetence and skin apparently as hard as Emma Frost’s.

Or the fact that this random bit of luck on my part does not change the terrifying reality that faces many more my age who are barred from full participation in the economy or the fact that I’m only one bad boss or broken closet door away from being right back in a capitalism-fueled mess that very nearly took away the last of my sanity and self-preservation. Having to forego food and basic necessities out of stubborn pride and refusal to deny my being for a chance at life.



And for fuck’s sake, it’s not like I got this opportunity out of some magical increase in effort. Blind panic maybe, denial of self-care definitely, and luck, oh yes, uncharacteristic luck. But certainly not effort. I mean, I’m actually going to be working less insanely hard shortly as I’ll be quitting the majority of my large stable of part-time jobs, giving me time and most importantly mental energy to work on side-projects benched for years.

But I mean… clearly that all just means that I’m super superior and everyone could do the same because to admit otherwise would be to acknowledge that we’re all teetering on the edges of the gears that grind us up, watching others slip and fall and begging various deity-like objects that we aren’t next and that’s just… ha ha ha. Crazy talk.

So yeah, with my newfound being able to reliably pay the bills and not panic like a gerbil in a cat-sanctuary job offer, I clearly need some hard and fast training on the ways of forging elaborate self-soothing fantasies of moral selection and inherent worthiness so as to avoid the guilt of realizing that my crucially timed good news is but a rare bit of corn in the shit-sandwich that is this economy.

Hey Bobo, can you help a sister out on how to do this whole not-starving-to-death-in-an-alley thing now that I’m under the sway of the financially stable mind-control slugs?

Shorter (or the last port before Jungle): Man, you know what I’d do with even more money than I have now? Literally buy friends. Because that seems like a purchasable good and/or service that will improve my relative standing among other friendless sociopaths.

…

THAT’S BRILLIANT!

I mean, sure, it sounds like the ultimate cry for help and demonstration of the human bankruptcy that is ol’ Bobo, where he is unable to even understand as simple of a concept as genuine friendship without co-opting it into his ever-more-in-vain struggle for meaning and “standing” in the world. As if one last tug on the sore and blistering cock of those who buy and sell countries will somehow mean his life wasn’t just a trading of casual cheap rhetoric for a temporary position of relative wealth and nothing of importance more. To be forgotten like so many other “intellectual conservative” chattel once the new crop is harvested.

But thanks to my recent empathectomy, I recognize it for the shrewd savviness that truly marks Bobo as a sharp cookie that will surely be remembered until the end of time. I mean, after all, as his title notes, there are social and political benefits to having friends and as such, they are definitely a wise investment for today’s busy executive.

And acquiring new friends will be a critical avenue of investment for me personally, seeing as how I was forced to liquidate all of my former friends so that the stink of their impoverished hands didn’t stain my slightly more upscale skirts.

I mean, sure, those former moochers stood by me in my darkest days, helped keep me limping forward when I had nothing as I did for them, forging lifelong connections I would sooner die than abandon, but meh, how will that help me out at the local rotary club?

No, it clearly is time to do some “upsizing” “reinvestment”. So Bobo, lay it on me.

Somebody recently asked me what I would do if I had $500 million to give away.

Well, seeing as how I’m going dizzy with the possibilities of how I can help those close to me with something on the level of 1/1000th of that, I can hardly imagine…

No, sorry, I need to learn to be a sociopath. Okay, Bobo, help me. What should be my first thought when presented with sums like that?

My first thought was that I’d become a moderate version of the Koch brothers. I’d pay for independent candidates to run against Democratic or Republican members of Congress who veered too far into their party’s fever swamps.

Oh, of course, delusions of “third wave moderate philosophy” that just so happens to resemble right-wing orthodoxy, just without all those super obvious insanities that bleed votes like a stuck pig. Cause, if there’s anything this world needs more, it’s more conservative rich fucks throwing more money into entrenching an abusive status quo to the point where the poor have no recourse but literal bloody revolution and feasting on your entrails.

I mean, why would we want to help solve horrific diseases, give those struggling a means of stabilizing themselves in the flood before they are smashed on the rocks, or deal with one of the many social injustices that plague us when we could ape the Koch Brothers but with less liberals noticing your fucked up shit and commenting on it?

With such a flawless concept, I can see why it is a natural first thought. But Bobo, I am worried. You seem concerned about such a brilliant notion as “I dunno, something safe and worthless to better assuage my ego. Could there possibly be a downside to this insipid barrel of slop that I am simply missing because of the way I do not possess your incomparable intellect?

But then I realized that if I really had that money, I’d want to affect a smaller number of people in a more personal and profound way.

Oh, my word, how could I have been blind to the possibilities! Doing good? With money?

What unimaginable creativity. No wonder you are worth millions of dollars a year!

The big, established charities are already fighting disease and poverty as best they can, so in search of new directions

Of course, what good would it be to aid against issues like disease and poverty when you would be sure to be overshadowed by much more famous and *coughcough*effective*coughcough* charities?

I mean, why would you even think of wasting money on some filthy poor lechers and diseased trash if it didn’t place your name and actions front and center and thus help coo into your ear and remind you of what an important and special person you are for giving charity.

And sure, my former socialist commie-loving self may have interjected here with treasonous musings on how the concept of “charity” is almost entirely about creating an industry around coddling the feelings and oh-so-specialness of rich assholes, being so scared to criticize them lest the money dry up and people be completely fucked, leading to situations where the people who need the most help aren’t helped, only those who are the most photogenic or allow the donator to feel morally superior. And how this is far less effective and far more degrading than a genuine safety net and social programs that simply cared for the least, funded drug research, and paid for upper-level educational programs simply because that is what a real nation does for its citizens.

But luckily, that old persona is as dead as the hobo in my trunk, so I must simply nod in understanding agreement. Yes, yes, surely one’s profile could not be properly raised with such “cliche” altruism.

I thought, oddly, of friendship.

… No, that’s not the pathetic admission of an empty suit, so bereft of genuine humanity that the very concept of friendship seems more distant an unfulfilled need than the hunger of starving children. It’s um… well, you see… er… that is to say-

Ancient writers from Aristotle to Cicero to Montaigne described friendship as the pre-eminent human institution.

Ah see, important old European guys thought friendship was pretty swell. Checkmate liberals!

You can go without marriage, or justice, or honor, but friendship is indispensable to life.

I suspect Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Oscar Grant may take small exception to justice’s inclusion on that list.

Each friendship, they continued, has positive social effects. Lovers face each other, but friends stand side-by-side, facing the world — often working on its behalf. Aristotle suggested that friendship is the cornerstone of society. Montaigne thought that it spreads universal warmth.

… Seriously, we need to argue about how friends are nifty as if this is some truly inspiring koan? Like, we’re all wandering around going… gosh, do I feel empty having abandoned everything that could have genuinely made me feel alive in the pursuit of propriety, discovering all too late that the gilded cage of “supposed to” offered no real protection other than an emotional deadening and a need to take out one’s self-hatred on those deemed lesser for daring to transgress against the very illusion eating me up inside?

Is that what I am supposed to become?

I mean to say, THAT SOUNDS AWESOME! All aboard the corpse-like husk express!

These writers probably romanticized friendship.

I know, pff. Don’t they know real friendships are awkward affairs where you only belatedly realize that the person inviting you to the cocktail party is only doing so out of social obligation and has no interest in hearing your old pathetic ramble about how Aristotle was totally the sexiest philosopher of all. I mean, have you seen in him in that chiton? Me-ow!

One senses that they didn’t know how to have real conversations with the women in their lives, so they poured their whole emotional lives into male friendships.

Well, seeing as how each of the three philosophers cited married only out of propriety if at all and had rather impressively sexist views on women even for the times they belonged to (Cicero was a big fan of implying feminine characteristics and that being the young victim of same-sex rape made you less than a man) and the fact that Montaigne carried on an intense relationship with Etienne de La Boétie in much the same way that Aristotle did with a number of male philosophers of his time…

Um… clarification question?

By “friendship”, did you mean, you know, friendship or like winkwinknudgenudge friendship. Cause there’s this service called Grindr and I don’t think you really need to pay for that kind of… “friendship”… well, okay, maybe you do… but not really at the 500 million dollar level.

But I do think they were right in pointing out that friendship is a personal relationship that has radiating social and political benefits.

Indeed it is. While terrifying and a seeming financial dead-end, friendship does come with important social benefits that can be exchanged for standing in the community and political benefit so a shrewd businessman might consider acquiring one of these “friendships” on the cheap, run it through the ringer to exploit maximum value and then flip it on the return.

Because that’s clearly what I’ve been messing up in my friendships for so long, treating it like an investment in a stock that I expect to pay off a reasonable dividend.

Oh what’s that best friend who has literally pulled me back from the edge multiple times? Who I have been there for through every romantic hardship and unfortunate pregnancy? You can’t improve my outlook for Q3? THEN GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!

From now on, it’s all about maximizing fiscal game by training more and more people to resent the very sight of me and my exploitative and manipulative ways! Cause that’s what good businesspeople do! Right, Bobo?

In the first place, friendship helps people make better judgments. So much of deep friendship is thinking through problems together: what job to take; whom to marry. Friendship allows you to see your own life but with a second sympathetic self.

Well, I suppose I would be giving that up, yeah. Having someone there to call me out on my shit when say, I let some rare moment of unprecedented success turn me into an abomination to everything I have ever held dear. Instead getting further lost in a lonely and meaningless path leading to penning fishwrap posts about how friends sure would be nice in the abstract because I have long since lost my ability to interact with other people on a human level. Where we are just people, trying to do right by each other, rather than have the best looking facade for an ever-changing cast of people who could give less of a fuck.

And I’m giving it up for what really? A chance to be a complete and utter prick? I mean… er… no, I’m totally committed. Maybe I’ll let someone provide a minimal benefit of providing a second opinion as long as that is a lickspittle confirmation of what I want to hear to better drown the creeping self-doubt that I’ve sold my very soul for money that has long since been enough for basic survival and an end to panic and stress…

Second, friends usually bring out better versions of each other. People feel unguarded and fluid with their close friends. If you’re hanging around with a friend, smarter and funnier thoughts tend to come burbling out.

Yes, purchasing a “yes-man” is a great idea. I mean, won’t I feel smarter, funnier, and more charming if I have a paid servant following me everywhere going “damn straight Mr Bobo, sir” or “ha ha ha, your descriptions of Applebee’s salad bars crack me right up”. Yeah, that will help me forget the chill spreading down my skin as I wrestle with the dawning horrific realization that I’ve become everything I’ve hated.

Finally, people behave better if they know their friends are observing. Friendship is based, in part, on common tastes and interests, but it is also based on mutual admiration and reciprocity. People tend to want to live up to their friends’ high regard.

And I mean, I don’t even need to get that touchy-feely. As Bobo notes, I could simply pretend the ever-rotating cast of meaningless faces at the cocktail parties are friends so the desperate suburban performance for “respectability” could silence the need for genuine connection or giving back to the communities that helped me when I had nothing.

I mean, it’s not like I grew up surrounded by such Silent Hill-esque mannequins, lamenting lives wasted and family and friends alienated, resorting to inviting over familiar enemies simply out of a desire to have an impact, even negative, on another person’s life so that the cold pallor of death could be noticed in some small way and they won’t just slip on by, another oppressive cog wasted away to a fantasy of what makes people happy.

I mean, that totally sounds more bearable than just accepting this small amount of a breather and using it to actually make things and turn some of those part-time job hours into volunteer hours and reaching out to others in my community.

I…I feel strange. Kinda achey and sick…

People don’t have close friendships in any hope of selfish gain, but simply for the pleasure itself of feeling known and respected.

Yeah, treating supposed friends as a tool to feed one’s ego is totally not the same thing as selfish gain and…

No, money is supposed to cleanse my humanity and make me a borg. Otherwise conservatives would have lied to me in order to make their deliberate choice to pursue a safe and oppressive status quo seem like a natural evolution anyone would be powerless to prevent and that would be unpossible!

It’s also true that friendship is not in great shape in America today. In 1985, people tended to have about three really close friends, according to the General Social Survey. By 2004, according to research done at Duke University and the University of Arizona, they were reporting they had only two close confidants. The number of people who say they have no close confidants at all has tripled over that time. People seem to have a harder time building friendships across class lines. As society becomes more unequal and segmented, invitations come to people on the basis of their job status. Middle-aged people have particular problems nurturing friendships and building new ones. They are so busy with work and kids that friendship gets squeezed out.

No, everyone is totally unable to have friends. It’s not weird. It’s a real issue.

So, in the fantasy world in which I have $500 million, I’d try to set up places that would cultivate friendships.

So what? Like a community center or something? A means for minority communities to meet up with each other? Things like… I dunno, the internet?

Hey, I wonder if that whole people being really awkward about admitting the strong friendships they form online actually are strong friendships has something to do with the numbers on your totally not made up statistic go down?

I know a lot of people who have been involved in fellowship programs. They made friends who ended up utterly transforming their lives. I’d try to take those sorts of networking programs and make them less career oriented and more profound.

Oh of course, something like a cold impersonal alumni service and “networking” conference. All the charm of a boring business obligation but with none of the getting paid for it.

To do that, you have to get people out of their normal hunting grounds where their guard is up. You also probably want to give them challenging activities to do together.

Oh I’m sorry, apparently I was giving the poor bastard too much credit. Apparently, his dream “friendmaking service” is basically one of those corporate “team-building” exercises where everyone wonders if they can plug the boss in the testicles during the paintball game while being able to blame it on that guy everyone hates.

Nothing inspires friendship like selflessness and cooperation in moments of difficulty.

Orrrrr it’s a Saw-style death trap…

So, yeah, pretty much still looking like a Team-Building Weekend.

You also want to give them moments when they can share confidences, about big ideas and small worries.

Nah, human interaction and mutual genuine interest in the well-being of others would never work. MOAR SPINNING BLADES!

So I envision a string of adult camps or retreat centers (my oldest friendships were formed at summer camp, so I think in those terms).

…Oh.

Oh, that’s unironically tragic.

When he thinks friendship the only thing that really resonates as human is the days when he was a fucking kid. It’s the blindness of nostalgia, but for the concept of having someone care about whether he lives or dies.

Bobo has apparently been without even that low-level temporal human empathy since he was a child forced to interact with other children and thus has no other baselines for understanding this acquisition known as friendship.

He has been so used to viewing everything in terms of gaining standing and networking and exploiting the poor fools who dare have sympathy and pity on him that he cannot even remember the concept of having real deep human interactions.

This is the lament of the dull-witted sociopath, slowly realizing at 50 that not everyone goes through life viewing others as disposable pieces for supporting his fragile ego.

I… my head. I feel something… I… I… don’t know if I want to be you, Bobo. Not now. Not ever.

Groups of 20 or 30 would be brought together from all social and demographic groups, and secluded for two weeks. They’d prepare and clean up all their meals together, and eating the meals would go on for a while. In the morning, they would read about and discuss big topics. In the afternoons, they’d play sports, take hikes and build something complicated together. At night, there’d be a bar and music. You couldn’t build a close friendship in that time, but you could plant the seeds for one. As with good fellowship programs, alumni networks would grow spontaneously over time. People these days are flocking to conferences, ideas festivals and cruises that are really about building friendships, even if they don’t admit it explicitly. The goal of these intensity retreats would be to spark bonds between disparate individuals who, in the outside world, would be completely unlikely to know each other. The benefits of that social bridging, while unplannable, would ripple out in ways long and far-reaching.

Lurching through life, assuming that the soulless hell of forced bonding experiences and unpleasant family reunions is a means of genuine connection. So divorced from humanity that Teambuilding seems a genuine substitute for caring about another human being’s life or death. So convinced that everyone else in the world is just as incapable of hatching a genuine friendship as him, because his ego won’t let him acknowledge the terrifying truth.

I… no. I WON’T! I- YEAAAAAARGH!

Oh holy fuckballs, what a nightmare, controlled by a capitalist Yerk. Oh man, need to make sure it didn’t really tell off all my friends. Man, what a nightmare. Well, at least there’s no long lasting consequence-

Why does my trunk smell funny?

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. No seriously, it’s genuinely mind-breaking to finally be looking at a future where homelessness isn’t a realistic short-term prospect. Knocking on all the wood that it doesn’t all collapse, but I’m super excited for all I’ll be able to do now with the extra time and mental energy. Hell, I’m already halfway through starting a new business and I’ve got about 90 ideas for books, websites, videos, etc… Not to mention getting back on a more regular timetable here on the site. I don’t want to overpromise, but my mind is literally buzzing right now, it’s such a relief. Thank all of you for helping me through some bad times in the past, both financially and emotionally. You all rock and I hope if you are struggling that I can provide something of comfort for you. Sometimes, rarer than a honest capitalist, things do somehow marginally get better… sometimes. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

* Obligatory.

** For those genuinely worried that success will make me less (let’s call it) lovably weird, have no fears, I’m still as batshit insane as usual. Fuck, I prepared for the interview that landed me my job by getting my breasts stabbed through with needles in front of a small paying audience***.

*** I was hyper-nervous (because getting this job was literally the difference between life and death) and had already prepared everything I needed for the last interview and just needed help getting myself to relax and feel confident… Did I mention that “lovably” weird part again?