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
Conversation
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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I think it’s better this way because you get a greater density of information exchange, which is where complex behavior—like innovation or cultural evolution—comes from.
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