A Boring Dystopia

Do “normal” people really have 10 or more close friends? I’ve never had that many close friends my entire life.

Yea, I'm going to have to call monkeysphere theory on this one.

Well the upper 13% are by definition not normal.

However it feels normal to have that many close friends. We have lots of regular game nights or movie nights.

It is however noticable that games are often not made for big groups to play together or that restaurants have a hard time to accomodate your group of ten or more people.

It also depends on your definition of close. I'd consider some people close friends that I haven't seen in over a year.

Yeah, I feel like their "close friends" in 1990 were probably just the guys at the Lodge or the bowling league. I'm not sure those relationships are any deeper than the parasocial relationships we form online. Just a bunch of guys with nothing else to do on Wednesday nights, so they just go down to some social club and roleplay.

I have had the same 15ish friends for more than 20 years and we live in different cities, a few hours away from each other.

We don't see each other frequently because of the distance, but we usually spend weekends together and it feels like we have not missed a beat since the last time we saw each other.

I think it is natural to have more than 10 close friends, it is like having a small community, but modern life made it very hard to keep close friends like that. And it sucks.

Our friend group sits at around 17. It ebbs and flows with girl/boyfriends coming and going (though mostly all married now). I hate to say it, but the key is low standards. We don't all agree on anything. We don't all have the same hobbies or even sense of humor. But we don't kick each other out over stupid fights, and everyone is always welcome at everything. If you cut people out when they don't agree with you, or when they screw up, your friendships disappear. You just have to treat it like family.

I think I've got right around there where I'm living now; that's part of what makes it hard to contemplate leaving the country, even though this place (US) is turning pretty terrifying: I know if I leave it'll take years to build up friendships like that again, if it ever even happens.

Do you guys have friends?!

The only IRL friend I have is one that I met in elementary school. Not on the best of terms but we were somewhat similar kind of weird. Also very introverted but also anxious. I have no idea how people make friends and where to start.

Where do you live? The reserve armed forces in Canada would fit that bill, depending on your feelings about that. A day a week and a weekend a month, I forget exactly but it's consistent, paid, but it's supposed to be easy enough to fit into a normal life schedule. They usually do disaster relief and stuff like that when they do get called, but theoretically you could be signing up for more given the state of the world.

Boy scouts/girl Guides/youth groups are always looking for group leaders.

Volunteer fire also gets close to that mark, it's voluntary but if you don't show up you get replaced.

And volunteer becomes "mandatory" the deeper you get. If you can find a small soup kitchen or conservation group, and really hold yourself to it for a few months, you might find you become vital to that organization. Then I guess it's up to your personal brain chemistry what "mandatory" means. If you have the keys, I'd assume you'd be there 30 minutes before the weekly soup prep afternoon is supposed to start to open up and meet that new person to show them around.

Many of these groups are small and in desperate need of good help and sometimes even leadership. On that same note some are little fifedoms and if you aren't getting good vibes just cut bait and move on.

But they'll lose the research grant!

the guardian kinda sucks tbh

No, we don't all fuck our friends. I think I have a total of one friend who I've "fucked" twice in 7 years. Gay culture goes beyond sex, and so do our friendships.