Many people complain they no can longer read longer things like long essays or books
Something similar is happening to relationships beyond immediate family and workplace colleagues, it’s getting harder to keep up in-person friendships by meeting in-person regularly
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Easier to meet with person n for the 1st time than person 1 for nth time, once a reason like a shared office is gone
Most curiosity about any person is satisfied after 1 meeting
Particularly clear as a blogger. A lot of people are curious to meet me once. Twice, not so much 😆
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Not like being disappointed and dropping it, since things generally continue cordially with deepened trust, but meetings 2+ require stronger reasons, a theme etc.
I’d guess the number of times I’ve met readers follows a power law. Takes me about 4-5 meetings to become friends.
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Wild guess at distribution of reader meeting frequency
Met once: 400
Met twice: 200
Met thrice: 100
Met 4 times: 50
Met 5 times: 25
5+ times: 25
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I’m really bad keeping up my end tbh. But it just takes a lot of effort. Especially if you move around a lot and don’t live in places with a high density of offline+online acquaintances. San Francisco is probably the only place where it would be easy for me to keep up.
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Sounds like a blessing one bestows
“Should you be more interesting in person than on twitter”
I think it’s because on Twitter, no one can see how actively you listen
There’s no eye contact
And no dynamic of voice
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I wish Twitter went back to 140, or better yet to 80 and added a long post format to make it easier to ignore the other longform menace, the tweetstorm.
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It’s alright. The 20somethings around here are already meeting in saunas without tech and just chilling for hours. Just keep riding pendulum and don’t get smashed to the wall on one side :p
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I don't think this is anything new. Friendships are greatly helped when you're "forced" to be in the same place same time as others
This is why people make so many friends in college
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Meeting a group of several developing acquaintances at once seems to be a more effective format for keeping interactions engaging + pushing concerns about there needing to be an obvious reason for meeting to the background.
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I suspect you may just be describing the life of a peripatetic freelance consultant - I’ve had almost the opposite experience since returning to mud island and immersing myself in a few more geographically based communities






