(Ignore what I said earlier about me not posting on here anymore. Turns out my Patreon is a total flop and no one wants to support me. No surprise there. I have also noticed people are still visiting this website even though I haven’t posted in awhile, which suggests to me people might still want to read what I have to say. So from time to time I will still use this place. But I’m not promising any specific frequency or whatever, it’s just gonna be whenever I feel like it).
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There’s a trend I’ve noticed gaining traction, and I think it only really started in the last 2 years or so. I noticed it more after covid lockdowns specifically (big shout out and thank you to the government for ruining our lives and making young people socially retarded even though covid only kills people who were old and fat, unhealthy people to begin with😆😂), but I believe due to how our system is set up it was probably an issue prevalent prior to that. The issue in question is the phrase I’m seeing frequently, “I have no friends.” The place I see this phrase the most is YouTube; it seems like people are becoming very comfortable discussing this stuff these days.
Do a search on YouTube for the phrase, “I have no friends,” and you might be surprised. There are tons of videos (a lot that have been published in the last 2 years, which backs up what I said above) that pop up. Videos with titles such as, “I am (insert age here) and I have no friends,” have become a popular video topic for various YouTubers. The thing that surprises me a little bit about this phenomenon: not only are these videos being made by the type of person you’d normally think has “no friends” (an unkempt loner male type who looks like he hasn’t washed his balls in 9 years), more and more I’m seeing cute girls post about how they have no real friendships, etc. (I’ve also come across a few videos posted by less attractive girls saying the same thing as well, but that’s less surprising as unattractive people will always have a harder time in life in general overall). This is surprising to me because when you think of a cute girl, you don’t think “solitude.” Yes, I know they go through problems and are people just like everyone else, but cute girls are traditionally not doomers and loners. A bubbly girl that at least has the self-awareness to have her makeup perfectly done and Farrah curls in her hair for a YouTube video in which she addresses the camera should definitely have at least one friend.
When I think of a cute girl I think of a person who has a small circle of friends, presumably a handful of other cute girls (and maybe one ugly one in the group they let hang around for low self-esteem reasons😆😂). They go out to restaurants together, go shopping, go clubbing, talk shit about the shitty boys they met while clubbing, get abortions together because of the shitty boys they met while clubbing, get oat and almond milk lattes, experiment and make out and scissor each other at sleepovers like Blue is the Warmest Color, and general girly shit like that. But no, not in 2022. It’s now more commonplace to see a cute girl on YouTube make a 15 minute video talking about how she has no friends and how she’s more comfortable being alone, etc. I hate to say it, but Uncle Ted was right: the industrial revolution and its consequences, etc etc.
Another place you see this type of behaviour is on Reddit. There are subreddits such as “Forever Alone,” in which people all over the world are bonding over the fact that they all claim to have no friends. These motherfuckers say they have no friends, yet they’re all talking to each other about how they have no friends: it makes no sense. Granted, an online forum is not the same as a real life friendship, but still, you get my point: these people are clearly contradicting themselves.
I myself have used the phrase, “I have no friends,” albeit facetiously. The truth is, I do have a couple people in my life I’d consider to be friends. As I get older we have less in common, but I’d still consider these people to be friends sort of. For example, I do not drink alcohol and do not like associating with those that seem to have a sense of pride about how much they drank over the weekend and unproductive things of that nature, but I’d still consider these people to be friends I guess. I could easily socialize with them and go back to my own life and be fine.
Another example would be friends I have that do nothing but send me TikTok videos and never ask how I’m actually doing. These aren’t real friends, but they’re still okay people I guess. I will still always not watch the TikTok, and then send a “haha” text back even though I didn’t watch the video and didn’t actually laugh in real life. That’s modern friendship for you. They mean well; I wouldn’t say I have “no friends,” but the nature of the word “friend” has kind of evolved. I don’t have many deep connections with people like I’d prefer, the types of people I can talk to until 4 o clock in the morning on the phone or something like I used to have in my life, but I wouldn’t say I have “no friends” in earnest either. The phrase “I have no friends,” is more of a blanket feeling in this society than a literal statement of fact.
To give you another idea of what I mean: I just went to Europe alone. It was a trip I’ve been thinking about for years. At one point I even offered to pay for a couple friends to come with me, but it just never worked out. So instead of waiting around for other people I finally just dipped in the one window of free time I had, and I had fun talking to people there and meeting new people etc. That’s kinda what I mean: I do have friends, but things just aren’t the same as when we were younger. And they probably never will be again, that’s just life.
I’ve been thinking about this lately, and here are a couple reasons I feel this no friend thing is such a popular sentiment.
1. Capitalism
First of all, let’s get this one out the way because it’s the most obvious. Capitalism is killing us all for a variety of reasons I won’t get into here (the most obvious example would be the government shutting everything down and then conveniently deciding to send us back to work even though the virus they were so worried about before never really dipped), and one of the biggest things it is killing is genuine friendships.
Think back to when you were younger and making friends in school and shit like that: competition was less of a thing. Then you grow up, enter the so-called “real world,” and find out it’s dog eat dog and one person winning means another person losing, and so forth. People allow themselves to become cutthroat in their endless quest for progress and stacking paper and blahblahblah, and it comes at a cost. Everyone is low-key Daniel Plainview and sickeningly proud of it. The price people pay for focusing on work constantly is usually time and friends/socializing. Very few people in this life have time, money, friendships, and freedom. In this life if you’re not rich, you only get one, and for most people it’s generally money from their meaningless jobs to pay their stupid bills.
2. No Community
That leads me to the second point: the average person has no community they can proudly say they belong to. There is no “tribe” for most people anymore. The few times you find a “tribe” of sorts, it almost immediately becomes poisoned by point # 1. I don’t trust most people because I know most people would stab me in the back for two loonies and a potato if the situation called for it. I have experienced this behaviour from people in the past and talked about it on here already, I don’t need to go into it again. All I’ll say is the corporate world attracts very sociopathic and corrupt people. Most people pride themselves on being moral and good, but at the end of the day the reality is they are no different than nazi mfs who are merely just doing what society says is good at the time.
I got derailed there, my bad. I was talking about community, which is what is missing in this society. When I was in Europe, something I was very impressed by was how easy it was to go to literally any coffee shop and start talking to people. Because what I learned is that their understanding of a coffeeshop is different than our (North American) definition of it: over there it’s a shared space for everyone. Here, you try that shit and someone will snap at you for interrupting their precious e-mail time.
3. Selfishness
This one’s related to the previous points, but I’ll elaborate here. When people say stuff like “I have no friends,” a lot of times what it really means is, “I am a selfish piece of shit and I never check up on other people or take the first step.” Think to yourself: when is the last time you took a genuine interest in someone in your life? I don’t mean a famous person and googling what they are up to and their projects and album release dates are etc, I mean an average REAL person in your life with no swag whatsoever who has nothing to offer anyone. It feels like no one really gives a shit about each other in this society anymore, so naturally it makes sense that most people feel they have no friends: they don’t even put in the fucking groundwork to maintain friendships to begin with. The only time someone checks up on someone in this capitalist society is when they feel they have something to gain from it.
It’s like when I was a kid. My mom would get all these calls on her birthday and cards sent to her from various people. And I would always joke, “Why do so many people care about you? Why are you so popular? That’s amazing, no one does that shit to me.” And she would say something like, “Well, Larry: what have you done for other people?” That is precisely my point: no one does shit for each other anymore, and yet they’re all wondering why they have no friends.
4. Phone calls are not a thing anymore.
This one might seem silly, but I believe it’s true. It goes back to points I was making with past work like social incompetence. One of the biggest things that has changed in the past decade or so is how we communicate with each other. We are still kind of in a transitional period with this technology shit. In the 90s and early 2000s, talking on the phone used to be a real thing. That was how people kept in touch. It was a great system. There was no text messaging, or even worse, viewing someone’s stories without saying anything in response. If you wanted to talk to someone you clutched your balls to your chest, picked up the phone, and called someone like a man. And from that, we got the art of conversation. It was like playing tennis or ping pong or something: you say some shit, I say some shit, you respond with something insightfully relevant, I respond with something also relevant, you respond with something you learned from a book you’re reading (another thing no one does anymore), and we go on and on from there. Not everyone was a good talker, but way more people were in the practice of being that way, something that is mostly lost today.
5. Compromise is necessary.
Just like how relationships between men and women require a certain level of compromise, it is necessary for friendships between people as well. Of course you might find people you connect with on a deep level and feel you might have known for a million years and so on, but I still contend that compromise is always crucial. And it’s another important thing I feel that has been forgotten in this world. Whether it is due to technology (sorry to sound like an old man here and regurgitating that as a reason) is debatable, but I do think the speed and efficiency people are used to with these apps and phones and shit has translated to people giving up on each other sooner than they typically would in the past.
Think about a thing like Tinder, for example. Or any dating app really. It’s a cliche thing to use as an example at this point, because most intelligent people know those things are stupid for actually meeting quality people. But I’ll do it anyway because this is a free website, I can do what I want on here, and none of you support me or pay my bills haha. The way it works is someone looks at another person’s face, and decides in a second or less if they want to engage with that person. Potential babies are lost due to a swipe. All because one person didn’t like how another person happened to look in one photo. In the past, what would happen? Those same two people might meet at a bar or bookstore or some shit like that, and they might not like each other right away, but the woman might have been more inclined to give the dude asking her out a chance because she was able to see the full person rather than one photo of him holding up a fish. She might have decided to keep talking to the dude and take a chance.
Going back to friendships, this same level of compromise is necessary. I think a lot of people in this society have this idea that they can curate their lives to an almost autistic degree, friendships included. What these people have forgotten is that people are not apps and you can’t dictate how a person in your life will be. You kind of have to embrace the chaos, to a certain extent. Like Pierre in War and Peace; as his life was falling apart, it ironically got better due to the fact that he was willing to embrace the bad and not just expect the good shit all the time. What Pierre realized is what so many fail to understand: life is meaningless, yes, but you don’t find your purpose through hedonism alone. It comes with some grit as well.
6. Being alone is a natural state
Finally, I’ll leave the two or three of you reading with this last point. I believe solitude is a natural state for a human being, and pop culture and media and all that type of shit has brainwashed us into thinking that if we are not being 100% social 100% of the time, we are somehow doing something wrong. The fact of the matter is, being social is something you do, not something you are permanently. In other words, if being social was a place it would not be somewhere you live, but somewhere you visit.
I know this might seem like it contradicts everything I said earlier, but I don’t think it does. I think being alone can be healthy for you, and this is where a lot of people get it twisted. Being too alone is bad, yes, but there is nothing wrong with sitting your ass down and reading a book for several hours in a row.
