friendship-as-a-service (FAAS)

and

Apr 21, 2023

randa and harry here. every week until we get bored we’re going to have a written conversation–a friendly correspondence, if you will–and publish it on friday. subscribe if you like it!

Monday, 3:05 MST

From: Randa

as you know, i have been thinking about how to “solve loneliness” or really just how to make it easier for people to make friends

in the process of my informal research i’ve come across a lot of friendship-as-a-service (FAAS) type companies – businesses whose value prop is to help you make friends. peoplehood is one such business, groundfloor is another.

peoplehood hosts IRL and virtual “gathers” that teach you how to connect better with others. it was started by the founders of soulcycle. you can pay $165 per month for up to 5 gathers.

groundfloor looks to be a less elitist soho house? their website says, “Groundfloor is an inclusive community of people from all walks of life looking to build meaningful relationships.” it costs $200/mo and includes access to a space which seems like a decent deal, but i still don’t like it…

this can’t be how we fix loneliness right? paying for friends?

i am open to being wrong. in a sense, going to college is paying for friends. esp if you’re in a frat or sorority. but paying for friends feels suboptimal. i don’t like the incentives.

i would pay to DO something with new people–not just “build relationships”– but something like, sit in a hot tub or go surfing or some other activity. that’s why my new goal is to open a bathhouse / surf shop, because it has a purpose other than friendship itself.

it just strikes me as sort of sterile and bad to productize community and friendship. i do not like it. but what if it works and i’m just being a hater? help me make sense of this.

Tuesday 10:25 AM EST

From: Harry

When you are a frat star like me, something that happens when you are 18 or 19 is you are sitting in your college dorm and you are talking to someone who will eventually live in a co-op in Kerrytown and they’ll say something like, “yea i just don’t like the greek life stuff, I don’t want to pay for my friends.” And maybe if you are like me you’ll say something like “Haha yea totally.”

This is an extending galaxy brain meme situation. Small brain is Greek life is paying for friendship, big brain is it isn't (me at 19), galaxy brain is it is but Who Cares (me at 28).

I’m thinking right now of a bunch of people and desperate interactions and combining them into one person, but to share one specific interaction, I once was at a Co-Op party in Kerrytown, Ann Arbor, and there was a woman sitting on the porch reading Consider the Lobster. I approached her and told her I loved that book and she said she was “hate-reading” it and we got into a fight about it. Then 2 hours later I jogged home about a mile because I heard some of my friends were having an impromptu extended riff session. On my jog home, a cop flagged me down and asked me where I was going at 3 am in such a rush and i said “to hang with my friends.” I also think i got into a fight with a girl i was hooking up with about Israel? (WATTBA)

This is all to say that you are sort of paying for friends in college. You're paying to live in a little friend city. I had, and continue to have no problems with this from a Cringe Perspective (though its probably like, bad for the world).

Conversely, I had a SERIOUS knee-jerk cringe reaction to a 200$ service that helps you find friends on a micro level. I go full middle school mode. My first thought is “Only a loser would do that.” I think a lot of people would have that initial reaction. Now that middle schooler / inner child is pretty much haunting me and undermining me constantly in my adult life so I’m willing to admit that he’s possibly wrong. And that my knee-jerk reaction is just that, a quick initial take.

I think maybe the irony I’d suspect is that in 10 people signed up, i’d still guess that 8 or 9 of them will be at worst total weirdo, and at best “not your vibe.” There’s an easy argument to then make to yourself that’s like “i told you so, everyone at the Soul Cycle But For Friends Is Weird.” But like…. how often is ANYONE shooting higher than 1/10 on finding friends? Making friends is excruciating, and that seems unavoidable.

idk. it makes me think of this

There NEEDS to be friction. So like a company whose job is to get rid of the friction for money, seems suspicious. But maybe there’s a middle ground? But i fear that middle ground already exists, its like…a bar?

Tuesday 9:42AM MST

From: Randa

ok yeah… this reminds me of one of my favorite pieces of writing, an opinion piece by tim wu: the tyranny of convenience

he argues that as a society we over-prioritize convenience and that we should consider doing stuff involving more friction (like hobbies). in the context of friendship, i think there is plenty of inherent friction: putting yourself out there to meet people, going out of your way to hang out, providing emotional support, doing favors for each other, etc. Big FAAS promises to make friendship more convenient… but at what cost? i don’t think it’s just the $200 fee…

wu says:

Today’s cult of convenience fails to acknowledge that difficulty is a constitutive feature of human experience. Convenience is all destination and no journey. But climbing a mountain is different from taking the tram to the top, even if you end up at the same place. We are becoming people who care mainly or only about outcomes.

the problem with using FAAS to make friends is that you can’t really take a tram to the top of friendship mountain. like you said - making friends is excruciating. you have to sift through weirdos and put in time and all that. FAAS promises to take you the top of friendship mountain, but it actually just drops you off at the bottom to fend for yourself. you still need to put in the work.

so, at best, i think FAAS will help people meet each other, but it’s still on us to actually build our own friendships and community. as you know, i actually came to a similar conclusion about dating - going to a singles party or using a dating app is a fine way of meeting somebody, but i think most people would have more fun gathering around a different purpose. for example i know a girl who runs this thing called produce parties where she has these big potlucks centered around a specific vegetable. i think that’s way cooler than a company centered around friendship itself.

Wednesday 11:03 AM

From: Harry

Dude the more i think about this the more I’m coming around to these services being BAD. The Founders Of Soul Cycle Made A Service To Help You Find Friends. Its bad! not lindy at all. Also this stuff exists. Coffee shops have game nights, art studios have classes. I’m OUT!!

I also think there’s something sinister about the idea of like some mission-driven company to combat loneliness. Thats not how any of this works. You combat loneliness through a series of unsexy and boring tiny steps. like by smiling at your barista or calling your mom or whatever.

I do wanna play ball with the tech acceleration stuff, because its boring to just be like Everything New Is Bad. Ok in 2019 I went to a house party that I think about all the time. It was a stoplight party. Anyone who was single got a green cup, anyone who was in a relationship got a red cup. Anyone in a “its complicated” thing got a yellow cup. It was SO fun.

Our data is everywhere already. If you want to figure out my address and moms name you could in like 15 seconds. You can probably reverse engineer someones salary within 5k just by looking at their Instagram. Let’s lean into it. Why not develop some kind of system (possibly state-sponsored) where we collectively beam whether or not we’re interested in being approached, and in what capacity, to some kind of cloud. Looking for adventure? It pings everyone around you that’s also open to that. Want to be ignored? Everyone will know.

I am joking mostly but i do think there’s something to the idea that what I really want is a guiding hand pushing me towards friendship and community, i just want to be able to reasonably fool myself into thinking its not there.