Visakan Veerasamy @visakanv 2020-01-30
I need a word that’s something in between friend and acquaintance. Something like super-acquaintance. Maybe I need to draw up a 2x2 to demonstrate why this is necessary. The word friend is almost too nebulous, and modernity has created new options for which we don’t have names
A super-acquaintance (again I need a better word) could be someone who I may have never met, who I may only have exchanged a couple of tweets with, but someone with whom I share a deep affinity for, a shared understanding. Micro-soulmate feels like it’s in the ballpark
Toph and Marion are two examples of people who
1. Live in different parts of the world than me
2. I’ve mostly interacted with online
3. When we met, we ended up spending over SIX HOURS together, unplanned
Are we friends? I would say yes!!
Now here’s the complication…
There are easily 200-300+ people who I know entirely through a few snatches of exchanged tweets, but I have not met yet
So to call them friends would be kinda pushing it
But I am confident that IF and WHEN we meet, we would *totally* become super close, in a matter of hours
Right, exactly this. I haven’t met Myk yet. Hopefully we will, when I visit NYC. And I’m very confident that meeting will be like meeting an old friend. No- it will be like meeting someone who is from the same obscure hometown that vanished off the map
2020-01-30
I have these people. When we meet I know we can have an amazing conversation for an hour or a year, and I know we can go a decade without talking and the next time we meet it’ll be the same.
I think of them as Fellow Travelers.
Sometimes I get sweet, well-meaning people saying things like “I would love to be friends with you.” And I appreciate that, I really, really do. But the truth is: none of my friendships started out with someone saying that. I don’t really “decide” to become friends with someone
Rather, friendship is the *consequence* of our interactions together
The way to become friends with me - or anybody else worth becoming friends with, in my opinion - is simply to play with them. Make small little bids and offers that you know they’ll appreciate + reciprocate
Also I’m not saying that every one of my friends is a “micro-soulmate”. You see how this is complicated and nebulous. Some of my favorite people are like, activity buddies. There are many different kinds of human relations and they do resist legibilization and tidy categories