is 'true friendship' dead?

In-scene Media brought to you by Audible.

➤ NEWSLETTER / ESSAYS

➤ PRODUCTION
written by Mina Le and Abbey Frank
edited by Charlee Reiff

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0:00 - intro
3:44 - monetizing friendship
19:24 - are phones making friendship worse
31:53 - the nuances of female friendship
37:11 - conclusion

[oonooooooooo]

i also think the culture of individualism and therapy speak is killing deep close friendships. before the internet, your best friend was who you sat next to in class, and if she fucked up or you fucked up you eventually would work it out. now it feels like any slight mistake even if it’s unintentional makes the other party toxic and you MUST cut them off, so the friendship never grows close because any obstacle and nobody is able to forgive anymore.

[KatiKosta]

I would kill for a female friendship girl group. It gets so, so lonely.

[emilyonizuka]

I think the problem with female friendships is the same problem with a lot of romantic relationships: if you romanticize something and put it up on an unattainable pedestal, it's never gonna work. the messy human side of things needs to be there in any relationship.

[bex]

"friendships take a little bit of inconvenience sometimes" thank youu

[amynellibabi]

It feels easier to be a hermit than to have friends.
Messaging a person feels like you're inconveniencing them, scheduling a meet up is near impossible because of how busy we are, and being vulnerable with them is "trauma dumping". It takes too much effort to try to navigate all of this, I feel like I've given up.

[julesrules]

I think effortless friendship is dead. We have to try harder to maintain IRL friendships and push away the lazy urge to only text when we feel like it and only meet up under perfect circumstances.

[kerb]

the friendships I had in college felt so shallow and context based. we’d hang out in class and for lunch but then not again. I always felt awkward asking people to hang out because they wouldn’t ask me back. In hindsight I know I was probably too shy and unaware of social cues, but it still hurt. I waited for friends to come but no one ever approached me, and I was never invited to anything. And I’d see mean, gossipy, selfish people in these large groups and it just felt totally unfair. I wish somebody had given me a chance to feel like a fellow woman and not the odd girl out.
I get sad knowing I’ll never experience the old timey television female friendship.

[imaltheia]

therapy speak has definitely had a hand in reducing the intimacy and trust in some of my friendships. whenever a friend starts busting out the pop psychology tiktok therapy speak like they've copy-pasted it straight from whatever new influencer they have a parasocial relationship with, i feel like i'm less than human to them. like all they want to do is 'win' this social interaction by being the bestest most purely moral version that they possibly can be, as approved by the current online cultural zeitgeist. and then i'm the fool for wanting to have a conversation about something messy, like grieving for my dead cat or whatever, in a way that isn't morally pure and perfect. like nevermind! guess we're just not going to talk like real people. and the friendship fades out because the trust isn't there anymore. go girl be uncancellable!

[daashazireael]

I have been craving female friendships.
Its hard getting older

[kywhitehead_]

The female friendship montage in the intro nearly killed me that was beautiful. Thank you for making that

[KateH]

the "don't ask your friend for a ride to the airport" thing has always made me so mad. everyone communicates love differently of course, but for my friend who expresses love via acts of service, I know asking for a ride to the airport is actually the best way for us both to feel loved and appreciated.

[sunglassesemojis]

I find the transactional friendship thing very interesting. I’m very much of the mindset that you trade favors— if I’m visiting someone and they’re letting my stay over for free, then I view it as my obligation to buy them dinner or bring a bottle of wine. But that can cause issues when others don’t act the same— I have friends who will stay over for 3 days in my small apartment and never even consider giving my a host gift or do any chores on my behalf. Mismatched expectations creates more problems than either attitude individually

[lissa]

I think a big struggle people have in modern day friendships is that they expect friendships to look the same or similar across the board when you’re dealing with unique people with unique personalities, communication styles, intensities, etc. We may look at one friendship or friend group and judge other friendships off of those dynamics and then draw conclusions about those other friendships based on the dynamics of another when that’s not realistic or fair. I have good friends that I’ve known since I was 3-12 years old that I still love dearly — we don’t talk constantly or even much, but we’re always there for each other when needed. My best friends from college and I communicate mostly in reels & memes and rarely see each other in person but when we do it’s like picking up where we left off and we know that we’re still besties. My run club friends I see 2-4 times a week, most of my social life revolves around them and we talk nearly constantly & have group chats, etc. All of these dynamics are very different but I cherish each of them just as much as the next, and what each friendship looks like is unique to the friend and how the friendship works. Seeing each friendship as a separate entity with separate dynamics and expectations both helps you foster more sincere and stable friendships overall but it also takes a lot of the pressure and fatigue out of friendship to not try to standardize the experiences across the board. Letting one friend’s memes stack up because you know they know you’ll read/watch them all when you have the brain space or time to do so while responding more quickly to another because you know they care about your Snapstreak doesn’t mean you’re neglecting one friend for the other or that you’re being a bad friend or that one is less of a priority in your life, only that the two friendships operate differently and you can have varying types of friendships that are equally as strong even if they don’t look the same.

Idk if I rambled a bit too much there but the TLDR is that I think we take on pressure to have friendships that look a certain way & that leads to friendship being hard in a way it shouldn’t be.

[hadeel]

People just want to collect friends or pose with insta baddies who have social capital. It’s not just the dating game that has been rigged, modern friendships are even worse imo.

[madinp]

Man, that montage at the beginning struck a deep chord. I really haven’t had that kind of friendship with anyone since my early teens, and it really hurts. I thought I found it in my first year of university, but she turned on me and stabbed me in the back. And then dropped out so we could'nt repair things lol. It really did hurt more than a romantic breakup.

I haven't been able to cultivate a close friendship with anybody since, and this is not through lack of trying. There's like this assumption that everybody has their close friends already from their younger years, and they don't need anybody else.

[evilandproud]

The best thing i ever did in my mid 20's was accept an invitation to a monthly "wine night" that my best friend from HS began with about 7 other women. The only commitment was that once a month, you showed up at one of our houses and bring a bottle of wine. We've watched eachother get married, have kids, change careers... Now that we are in our 40's it is harder to get together but we have a text thread we are always sharing our lives on with eachother. So now we can share and keep in touch and every now and again we still all get together. We don't talk religion or politics but EVERYTHING else is on the table. They have saved my life so many times. I love them all to this day and we are all totally different from one another. Amazingly, any "gossip" that happens is constructive and comes from a place of concern.

It takes effort and practice to be good to eachother, but to have people who accept you for simply being human is priceless. Hang on to your good friends!❤❤❤

[hazey_dazey]

I feel like everyone is so far apart now. I'm a very low-effort hangout type of person. Just sit on a couch and chat while something's on tv or going to the grocery store together. Now that i don't live with/near my friends, it's hard to coordinate something like that. On top of that, all my friendships are secondary. Like, all my friends have other friends they care about more, so i'm just not important enough for them to do the work

[lianmcintyre]

I think a big part of it is also the lack of third spaces. If the only places you can go to hang out with people is somewhere you have to spend money then it adds to the feeling that your relationship is transactional. I agree with the I'll get it next time kind of mentality, which is how I operate with my friends, but given how expensive everything has gotten I can see how having to constantly pay for things every time you go out and the financial strain of it can impact things.

[_Kamahl_]

OMG I WAS JUST TALKING TO SOME PEOPLE ABOUT HOW HARD MAKING REAL FRIENDS HAS BECOME. It is just insane how this came at THE perfect time.

Friendship and connecting at this day is just so difficult... and the world feels really shallow and empty and lonely :/

[oomay]

Another funny thing is how a lot of this younger generation (which I'm part of) will air out their dirty laundry with their friends on social media as if they're influencers throwing shade when they're not. I remember this back and forth between these two girls and their falling out on tiktok and people on that app and twitter were throwing in their two cents about it. And its like why am I learning the most typical friend drama on social media as if they were famous and not just random girls on the internet 😭