We Are Not Friends

The Increasing Impersonalization of the Internet

There was a time when I had too many “friends.” Thousands of them, maybe more. Everywhere I went, there was someone willing to meet me for coffee or say hello at an airport. In fact, I probably would have called you a friend. But that was a long time ago.

Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

In those days, I would have recommended this resource or that article by “my friend” who was very likely someone I’d met on Twitter, bumped into at a conference, or just wanted to impress. Maybe it was the fact that I wasn’t popular in high school, or I saw someone else do it; but for a long time, I misused a very precious word.

The other day, someone who works for a good friend emailed me, unaware of my relationship to their boss. This person was asking if I would review my friend’s company, offering to pay me in the form of a ten-dollar Starbucks gift card in exchange for an honest review—so long as it was five stars.

This note from a stranger, which included my name in the salutation, had a few details about individuals I’d referred to the company and contained one of those videos you can embed in an email. The video addressed me as “my friend” and explained everything mentioned in the email but with a smile and exuberant hand gestures.

When I rewatched the video, however, I realized this person didn’t mention my name but only referred to me as “friend,” signaling to me that this was a video they had recorded once and repurposed multiple times for different recipients. Which is fine, of course, except that it was meant to feel more personal than that. In the email, they said if I couldn’t give them five stars to not leave a review but instead tell them how they could “make it right.” 

I had to decline the offer. For a few reasons:

First, I hate Starbucks. It is not good coffee.

Second, I’ve never actually used the service, so it would be disingenuous to write a review of it. In the past, I’ve recommended it to friends and clients with the caveat that I haven’t used it myself but know the owner and can vouch for the information I’ve learned directly from him.

Third, and most importantly, it felt like a bribe.

Of course, I didn’t say any of that. It didn’t seem appropriate. “No thanks” was all I could muster with a followup explanation that I knew the owner personally. The very congenial person on the other end of the exchange said no problem, extending their appreciation in the form of multiple exclamation points:

“I appreciate you, Jeff!!!!”

I forwarded this email exchange to my friend who runs the company—not with the intent of complaining but to inform. I’d appreciate the same if the situation were reversed. When I did, I received a reply that said he was on sabbatical and this email would be deleted without anyone reading it. I shrugged and moved on with my day.

This is not that uncommon of an experience for me.

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Less than an hour later, I received a text message from an unrecognizable number that went something like this:

Really quick Jeff, could you use a vacation?

I have a few spots left for the such-and-such retreat in some place luxurious with NAME and I thought of you.

Let me know.

I paused for a second, because NAME is someone I know. For a moment, I thought I was being invited to a special get-together. The anonymous number did, after all, use my name and “spoke” in a casual manner. The fact that it was an unknown number did not throw me off, as I am not great at saving people’s numbers in my phone. I often have to ask who this is when receiving a text. So when this number used my name, I assumed it was personal—and that was my first mistake. 

“Who is this?” I texted back. 

No reply.

Then I realized I was on NAME’s email list and had given them my phone number at some point. This is something I do on occasion. As a ghost writer, I try to keep up with the work of my clients and friends just to see what they’re up to. Call it research. Sometimes, though, the line between friendship and work gets blurred, and I receive a message like this, unsure if it’s personal or business.

Turns out, it was just business. As it often is these days.

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The other week, an old friend texted to say he was in town for an event and wanted to get together. I hadn’t seen him in a while and thought it would be nice to connect. He asked if I wanted to be part of a “mastermind” event with a handful of other local creators. Sure, sure.

This friend runs a very successful startup but has always been a humble and earnest soul. When I asked for more information and didn’t hear back, I assumed he was busy. Several days later, I followed up. Still no answer. A day or so after that, I received an email from his assistant with some details. But the email was addressed to another person and described a public event with hundreds of “tickets” available.

I replied, saying I didn’t think that message was for me or perhaps they’d accidentally copied-and-pasted what they’d sent someone else and forgotten to change the name in the salutation. The assistant quickly replied, apologizing and admitting that was what had happened. I said I understood, because I did. I’ve done the same thing myself. They assured me I was still very much invited to the gathering and filled in some details I had not received from my friend. 

When this happened, my friend immediately followed up with a text, saying he wanted to see me and that the meetup he’d mentioned was prior to the larger public event. I told him thanks and that the exchange just felt weird to me, but I appreciated that he had a lot going on. When the day for the event arrived, I decided to stay home. I don’t know why exactly. It just didn’t feel right anymore.

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“Is this what entrepreneurship is these days?” I asked my wife the next morning as we brushed our teeth before breakfast. She sighed.

“It doesn’t even feel like entrepreneurship,” she said. “There is nothing innovative about any of this.”

I nodded. Maybe I’m getting old or just tired of the whole internet marketing game. Maybe it’s the company I used to keep or the state of the web right now. (Do we even call it that anymore?) But this behavior—this performative personalization of digital communication—seems weird. Why is a stranger I’ve never met calling me friend? Why are they offering me a gift card to a coffee shop I hate in exchange for a service I’ve never used? Why are we copying and pasting messages we’ve sent to other people and replacing the name, while still pretending it’s for someone else? This all feels a little absurd, causing me to wonder if I am the one who’s the stranger here.

I am often reminded of Sartre’s complaint about his existential malaise, referring to it as a sense of “nausea,” which is a wonderful word to describe the unease one sometimes feels with the world around them. “I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices,” he says. “All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together?”

This, I think, is what makes unusual behavior usual. It’s not that it isn’t inherently strange—it is—but when everyone seems to be doing it, we simply accept it as the status quo. More than ever, the world seems like a foreign place to me. It doesn’t make sense in my mind. But that wasn’t always the case.

There was a time in my life when I sent videos to strangers, calling them “friends.” I offered bribes and tricks to get people to do things I wanted so that I could make a buck or become a little more recognizable. None of this is exceptional or new, this pretending to be in real conversation with someone when you are not, trying to make a quick connection in service of some greater goal. In many ways, the end has always justified the means. But with the Internet, this seems to be getting worse as of late. I don’t know if it’s our compulsive busyness or the pressure to “keep up,” but I am finding it increasingly difficult to connect to a true human being nowadays.

“How are you doing?” a casual acquaintance might inquire. 

“I’m doing all right,” I say. “Yourself?”

“I’m good!” they retort with a little more enthusiasm than necessary; and then, without taking a breath, reply: “How are you?!”

“I’m doing all right today,” I say again, not even attempting to smile.

This is life in the 21st Century. We are all running on autopilot, having optimized our lives to the point that we are no longer living them. 

I know what it’s like to be moving so fast, to be so desperate for another click or sale, that you don’t have time to catch up with an old friend. I know the frenzy that drives a person to pack another meeting into an already busy schedule—all in the name of “connection.” And, of course, I know the automating of emails and text messages and the copy-and-paste outreach game (I’ve even been called out publicly for it). 

I get it. All of it. But I can’t in good conscience hurl exclamation points at strangers anymore. I can’t pretend to know you if I don’t. And I won’t bribe you into doing something you don’t want to do. It doesn’t feel good anymore; and as subjective as that sounds, it may be far more important than we realize. “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind,” Emerson wrote. We all have to protect what matters most to us, even if it doesn’t matter that much to anyone else. This is what I think integrity is: not necessarily doing the “right” thing but doing what’s right for you.

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“Can I take a picture of your work station?” The woman asked me at the coffee shop this morning, wielding her iPhone in one hand, ready to assault. I looked up at her, befuddled. I was wearing a sweatsuit, had just dropped off my kids at school, and was trying to squeeze in an hour of writing before my day officially started.

“For Instagram,” she clarified. 

“I guess,” I said, picking up my mug to sip the lukewarm coffee I’d let go cold. 

“Oh,” she said, sounding alarmed. “Can you… just… um, turn your mug… a little?” 

Then she did it for me, crouching down to take a shot of the freshly-cut flowers she’d just placed on the table, right in front of my mug with the coffee shop’s logo on it. I was somewhere in the background of the photo, sitting in front of my computer, typing this article. Minutes before, I’d watched her carefully placing bouquets on every table. I’ve been attending this coffee shop on and off for the greater part of a year and cannot remember seeing a fresh bouquet flowers anywhere, ever. But now I understood. These flowers weren’t for me. They were for “them.” For Instagram.

This is the sad reality of the world today: everything has become the Internet. Nothing is safe from the tentacles of self-promotion and social media snapshots. Those people sending you once-in-a-lifetime offers are not your friends. The strangers trying to bribe you into five-start reviews are not your pals. Even I am not your friend.

We are strangers, you and I. We are not friends, nor should we be. We’ve never met. We haven’t attended each other’s kids’ birthdays or seen one another through hard times. You haven’t sat on my front porch late at night, sipping a beverage and talking about your spouse. I don’t know your parents’ names and if both of them are still living. We have, at best, only exchanged a few million pixels of information across this superhighway of digital content; and that is certainly something—but it is not friendship. A friend, I hope, is something more than that. 

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Postscript: When my friend mentioned at the beginning of this article returned from sabbatical, we had lunch the next day. I shared a little about my interaction with one of his team members who asked for the review, and he said: “You can just ignore them.” We proceeded to spend the next ninety minutes exploring new business opportunities for me, with him encouraging me the entire time. Then he paid for my meal and for another table. That’s a friend, a real one.