tell your friends, to get with my friends and we can be friends. "hi, this is my friend ." you've just been introduced to a friend of a friend, what do you do in this situation? do we (as a species) have a social obligation to be nice to our friends' friends? i mean, if we are somewhat measured by the company we keep, shouldn't it make sense that a friend of a friend would also be cool? shouldn't any friends of friends be given a fair shake? there are two schools of thought on this matter: yes and no.



for the "no we shouldn'ts" the reasoning goes like this. in befriending you, i've already used a highly organized selection process to cull six billion other people; and now you want me to accept someone else based on your (possibly flawed) standards? in the immortal words of william sun, "aw hell no." i am quoting only william's favored verbal expression, not his individual thoughts on the matter.



we forgive our friends for many things: bad taste in clothes, faulty opinions, horrific choices in people. plus, what a friend likes might not be what we like. said in a more straightforward way, just because a friend likes it doesn't mean you like it. this friendship principle 2a also extends to people. while it might make logical sense that if A likes B and B likes C, then A should also like C, it doesn't work that way. the way it works is that the chances of you liking a friend of a friend is about the same as you liking a totally random stranger. the bonds that tie you to a mutual friend make no difference and should have no impact on how you receive or perceive an individual. this is how the "no we shouldn'ts" think. and it is a very valid way of thinking. logical in premise and efficient in execution. some people are tards, should we be friends with them just because we share friends? aw hell no.



now, the "yes we shoulds" consider a friend of a friend their friend already. at least in the beginning. if a "yes we should" meets a friend of a friend, they are immediately inviting with their langauge and action. their reasoning is simple. "i will extend my friendship and hospitality to everyone and everything that encompasses my friend, up to and including his/her friends." on a fundamental level, it makes a lot of sense. "if this person is important to my friend, i want to get to know them, or at the very least, try to be nice to them." this method of treating friends of friends is of course, in our altruistic society, preferable. but is it better?



some would say that any friend who can't, or won't, treat a friend of a friend nicely is not a real friend at all. but this is simply not true. i personally prefer it if my friends would give the benefit of the doubt to my other friends, but i understand that this cannot always be so. i've actually gotten semi-upset or confrontational when faced with the prospect of friends disliking each other. i want to hear reasons, explanations. i want to see diagrams, evidence and testimony. i don't want to hear "i just don't like'em." why don't you like them? why why why? over time, i've come to understand that some people just don't really want to bother extending themselves until it occurs naturally. i can respect that. i guess.



the way i handle friends meeting friends nowadays is that i don't expect certain people to be "friendly." i understand that specific people would rather just operate in their own space, and as much as i want all my friends to be friends with each other, it can't work out that way all the time. so now i just expose only certain friends to certain other friends. i go into situations trying to "even the odds" if you will. i know which of my friends are more likely to be more social and which are more likely to be anti-social. either is cool, i don't take it personally anymore, as long as everyone is civil.



the weird thing about all this kind of stuff is that you never know who will get along and who won't. you think that two of your friends will really get along and then they totally don't. or i've had situations where one friend gets along best with the person i would of thought they had the least in common with. you never know. some people are reading this and thinking "who cares? this is stupid. just have everyone hang out. why are you even thinking about this?" i have to think about this because this is what hanging out entails. you can't just have everyone hanging out willy nilly at random. it has to be carefully pre-planned and thought out. otherwise you get social disaster.



okay, maybe it ain't that deep. or is it?