Posting challenge

[magnetic_pole]

In praise of folks you know a bit.

I've been thinking about friendship both in and out of fandom contexts recently, partly because of hp_friendship, which just wrapped up a great run, partly because I've noticed that the better half and I are working harder to find friends and maintain friendships as we get older, and partly because we've got a surprise house guest this week, a friend from college we haven't seen more than four or five times in the past almost-twenty years. It's gotten me thinking about why intimacy of various sorts is so important, how to find folks who make good friends, why I sometimes make poor choices in doing so, how to be a good friend to someone who's going through a rough patch, how to be a good friend myself as I go through a hard time, how to keep friendships alive in the face of work and family responsibilities, how internet folks--the only friends I don't need an appointment or a plane ticket to visit with, at this point in life--are different from other types of friends, etc.

But something different today: acquaintances. There's a theory that the sociologist Mark Granovetter put forth in the 1970s in an essay called "The Strength of Weak Ties:" that even as we tend to think about our social world in terms of our "strong ties"--strong social relationships characterized by emotional intensity, duration over time, shared experience, mutual assistance--weak social ties, or acquaintance relationships, are crucial in other ways. Unlike strong ties, which tend to be with folks who are similar to ourselves and occur within existing social networks, weak ties can be "bridges," connecting dissimilar individuals and social networks and helping diffuse ideas and information in a way strong ties can't. (Granovetter originally was doing research on job finders, and so I've always though of this as the academic explanation for why your mother, who'd do anything for you, usually can't get you a job, where her coworker's cousin's friend, someone you'll meet once in your life, might be able to.) Fandom is filled with these oddly effective weak ties--imagine advertising a fest on your journal in a post that's seen both by your closest friends, who'll create for your fest or hold your hand through the rough spots, but also by that random person you added once after reading a particularly smart comment somewhere, who then advertizes it on her journal herself and draws in folks you've never met before. You need both to keep fandom alive.

So while we're praising weak ties: go out and form them! The 2013 Self-Pimping Rec List! There's new-to-you fic and art involved--what could be better? And on the strong-tie front, I'm curious to see what the flist recs, too.


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Comments

[berry]

i clicked on the link to that essay, but as soon as i saw the jstor logo at the top of the first page, my brain instinctively shut down - too much like work during non-work time! maybe i will come back to it when i'm not so immersed in research.

i am really interested in the general idea of the strong link/weak link distinction, though. i've been thinking a lot about friendship recently, partly because this new(ish) relationship i'm in and moving city has led to a certain amount of developing new friendships. one thing i do like about academic life is that new people come in and out of my workplace all the time. hard for me to figure out why some friendships stick and some just fade over time, though.

[magnetic_pole]

Ha! Yes, it's a bit too much like work, fair enough. (And for full disclosure, I tend to be a little cavalier about articles outside my discipline, though--tend to grab the ideas that interest me and not worry about the rest--so I can confidently offer you reassurance that even a lightweight skim will be interesting.)

Anyways, yes--the strong tie/weak tie concept caught my eye, as well, because it helped reconceptualize weak ties not as pale versions of shallow ones but as ties that had their own criteria and advantages--the ability to help you make big jumps outside your immediate social circles being one of them.

You're sweetie's a bit older than you, right? Is his experience similar to yours? Plus there's the whole dynamic of making friends together, as a couple, that's got it own logic. I feel like there's a big regrouping going on amongst folks my age, as the most intensely job-oriented and kid-oriented folks drop those who aren't following the same paths, and a number of others decide their dance cards are full, and they're not looking for more friends. It's an odd thing, and I'm not sure if I'm just particularly aware of it right now or it's a broader characteristic of the late 30s and early 40s. M.