Let's Talk About Friendship Etiquette in 2023, Shall We?

The Cut etiquette piece shared on Monday struck a nerve, not just from other media orgs—I’m loving BuzzFeed’s ‘The Terminally Online Version Of New York Magazine’s Etiquette Rules’ FYI— but from you, dear readers, expressing your own WTFs and OMGs and HTAHWIESTKTR?!?!* And while it likely goes without saying that we’re all taking from the piece that which we feel attacks us directly (“When another human is present, don’t talk to your animal in the private voice you use when alone together.” How DARE you, NY Mag, HOW DARE YOU), it also elevates a melange of interpersonal insecurities that have come to the forefront of our collective id:

How, exactly, should humans be friends, in this here year of our Flying Spaghetti Monster 2023?

Because the pandemic kinda-sorta-absolutely-most-certainly changed the game of how we bond with our fellow humans. Pre-2020, you tended to consider someone your bestie if you saw them IRL often. Or, if they lived far away, you knew they cared a lot about you if they went out of their way to make sure you would share some kind of personal space with them for a portion of their trip. 

In the before times, friendship FOMO evolved out of actually missing out, of not being in the room for major moments and living to see the evidence on social media later. 

So the pandemic, of course, made certain things less anxiety-inducing for the first few months. No more were we at home, wondering if there was some super amazing art opening we weren’t invited to. No, we knew exactly where our friends were, which was exactly where we were: sitting at home in our sweatpants, bingewatching breadmaking videos. We could measure our friendshipdometer in how many heartfelt texts we had, how many Jackbox TV invites we received, how many phone calls we took while cleaning our living room. For a few fleeting months, physical proximity was no longer a barrier to connect because we were all in the same traumatized boat, and we all had pocket computers than helped us see that we were all doing our best to row.

But that doesn’t replace bonding over many hours in person, and that isolation wasn’t going to last forever.

An absolutely magical and emotionally draining personal combo I possess is being a hyper attuned detector of other people’s feelings with the emotional object permanence of a goldfish. Which is to say, when I am in the room with someone, I am acutely aware of what that person’s emotional state. And when I am engaged in a day-to-day conversation with someone, I’ll read into every punctuation point, every emoji, every GIF (I’m an elder millennial, what do you expect, I still rely on that to express myself) to attempt to determine whether or not someone dislikes me. 

But on the other side of the coin, if not in constant contact, I might lose track of friends for years. And from 2020 onwards, if someone’s name slipped below the fold in my iMessage feed, I would immediately forget our conversation existed and forget to respond. It’s not that I stop caring, it’s that the tiny German professor in my brain gets distracted by a different chalkboard, or falls asleep. But the chalkboard is still there!

Now, does this mean I cycle through friendships? I hope not, because some of my nearest and dearest are those I can immediately pick up with after time apart, whether that be virtually or in the meat space. 

But y’all, I’ve been worse of late, which is why I word vomit all of this. Just as we had to navigate going from our office to our living room, and now figure out how to be a good colleague in a hybrid world, I think we’re all struggling with how to be a good friend in our new reality.

Because it isn’t the same world as pre-2020. Collective memory can now be digital, as we use group chats serving as common experience-generating pits of LOL, a place where folks across a country can congratulate an engagement, console a loss, or kvetch about the latest episode of Last Of Us. It’s a freaking blessing - I’ve become super close to college classmates I haven’t seen in over a decade going through similar life events because I can text them a Tik Tok of a farm animal or a Psychology Today piece on narcissistic emotional abuse (what can I say, I contain multitudes.) 

But that digital connection can’t be assumed ubiquitous and/or supplanting of other experiences. We’re layering on that pre-pandemic IRL FOMO, and let’s admit that it really sucks. Because there’s no way I can show up for coffee in NYC to digest last Thursday’s episode of Criminal Minds Evolution with Friend of the Missive Sarah, though I very much wish I could. 

So again, like work, the even interaction playing field afforded by a universal all-online or all-IRL is off kilter, as we navigate when to text, when to call, and when to just show TF up.

And like I said, I’m not getting it right! Just as I re-adjust to attending a committee in a physical space, my little rodent brain has forgotten to text or email back my friends far more times than I’d like to admit. I’ll read a heartfelt message, compose a response in my head, and then get distracted. I’m kinda failing at both worlds: I’ve missed events, I’ve forgotten birthdays, I’ve failed to check in on friends going through a break-up, I’ve missed Twitter DMs, I’ve forgotten to mark my calendar for a spa trip. 

So I guess this is all to say: if I’ve left you on ‘Read’, I’m sorry, and I’m really trying. And I hope you’ll do as I strive to do: give my friends the grace and space to mess up and try again.

Be kind to each other… and to yourselves.

xoxo Amy

*How The Actual Heck Was I Ever Supposed To Know These Rules?!?!