Message in a storm drain
Let me tell you a story.
In the immediate present, we're gotten more lenient about the term 'friend.' In say, 2010, friends would be people I did substantial activities with, long-distance or not. I spent a fair amount of time with them, usually hours continuously gaming or hanging out at Happy Donuts arguing if the giant fake doughnut on the ceiling would crush us in an earthquake. I would know a lot of details about their life, likely know their friends or family.
Most of the time, I would know their last name.
Facebook eventually moved from real names to aliases. This reversed a punishment for trans people and survivors of violence who were changing names or dodging stalkers. Thankfully Facebook would never be transphobic again. The general trend is that what I genuinely know about people has declined. Most new contacts in my phone do not have a last name. They may not have a first name. They almost certainly do not have a mailing address, and quite possibly do not have an email address. With Discord and the move of Signal towards allowing usernames, a lot of people I come to know something about are not even put into contacts. They are shards on a bunch of different apps.
We talk about a loneliness epidemic, how so few people have no close friends. The line might have once been between close friends and friend-classmates or friend-coworkers. People who might be just classmates or coworkers- it would certainly be reasonable for people on the other side to think that was what we are. The question for me is whether I have friends or whether I have strangers who reply to messages sometimes. Though I do know a fair number of people who live in the city I do, it's more likely that we only know each other's social network through conversations. My friends meeting my other friends is rare- if we have more complex ties it's because I tend to date trans people and that's a community of few degrees of separation.
I have a couple of times tried to figure out if I friend is okay through raiding Instagram follows for local people. I'm deleting Instagram this week because Facebook would never be transphobic again. I can't do that anymore.
Who's a stranger I gave a hopeful label to?
Artemis