compartmentalizing your friendships

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How much crossover is there between your various circles of friends? How much do you want? Is your real-life friend network one throbbing massive of interconnectedness? Is it important to you to maintain different sets of friends who exist independently of each other?

Also, I guess... to what extent do your ILX friendships intersect with your other friendships, and do you care?

― BLACKOUT '03! (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 18:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Wait, I'm sorry, I'm kinda confused...what are "friends"? And can we eat them?

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 18:33 (twenty-two years ago)

they're electric

― BLACKOUT '03! (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 18:34 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp2/features/wallpaper/images/800/gary_numan.jpg

― Thy Lethal Zen Ned (Ned), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 18:37 (twenty-two years ago)

(On a more serious note -- there's a wide variety of crossover between ILX friends, i/r/l friends, friends who moved from one arena to another, etc. etc. I don't have any overarching theory but I do like introducing cool people to each other when I can.)

― Thy Lethal Zen Ned (Ned), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 18:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Ha!

Seriously though, my hometown friend-and-acquaintance network is extremely integrated; just this weekend I found out two of my closest friends (who I met completely independent of each other) dated in high school. ILX hasn't become as cross-pollinated into that (yet) mostly cuz of A) inability to attend FAPs due to location & travel constraints and B) shortage of non-Cprek friends on ILX.

I wanna do a Lexington FAP, but what it'll end up being is me and Cprek drinking coffee and shootin' the shit, and that happens all the time anyway.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 18:44 (twenty-two years ago)

All of the above.

― donut bitch (donut), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 18:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Lexington Micro-FAP!

― Dale the Titled (cprek), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 19:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Why are "ILX friends" and "real life friends" two different categories?

― Ally (mlescaut), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 19:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Why are "bowling friends" and "jogging friends" two different categories? I think it's all dependent upon perspective/amount of overlap between your activities and those of your friends.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 19:08 (twenty-two years ago)

(IOW, if you hang out with a bunch of people off-board who also are on-board, this is a silly question.)

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 19:09 (twenty-two years ago)

I didn't make a distinction between ILX friends and real-life friends. I asked "To what extent do your ILX friendships intersect with your other* friendships?"

*italics added for emphasis

― BLACKOUT '03! (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 19:10 (twenty-two years ago)

"WORLD'S ARE COLLIDING! YOU'RE KILLING INDEPENDENT GEORGE!" < /art vandelay aka "I always wanted to pretend to be an architect>

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 19:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, Jody, I can read English. Ned, OTOH, did and I'm curious as to what his distinction is since 90% of the people he talks about all seem to be "ILX friends".

― Ally (mlescaut), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 19:14 (twenty-two years ago)

why are "fuck buddies" different from "beer-" or "bowling-" or "road-trip buddies?"

― Kingfish (Kingfish), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 19:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Ned, OTOH, did and I'm curious as to what his distinction is since 90% of the people he talks about all seem to be "ILX friends".

Eh, a poor choice of words on my part. Think of it this way -- my closest friend here in Orange County is Stripey, who posts on the boards irregularly, while after that would be friends Y and Guy and their family, who don't post here at all. If a better distinction is between ILX and non-ILX instead, maybe that makes it clearer.

― Thy Lethal Zen Ned (Ned), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 19:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Well I've only known these ILX people for a little over a year, but I hope I'm gradually becoming friends with some. There are certainly several who I'd very happily call friends, but obviously I have no idea if any think of me that way. Then there are my old friends, a pretty tight group most of whom I've known for over 20 years (it'll be thirty years with D next month! School, Cambridge, a magazine together...), who I love deeply and think of as my real family. The one overlap (besides me, obv) is Andrew L, who brought me here, who I've known since 1981.

I don't try to keep them apart at all. I had a joint birthday thing, so some (the early arrivals) met each other, but as numbers required more than one big table in the pub, it kind of split into old friends and ILX people. Natural and inevitable. My old friends know about this place, and one other has posted a few times. Whether any more will, I've no idea.

There are some slight accidental links too, in fact. Tom had already met several of these old friends through comic connections. Mark S almost ended up working with one old friend. There are other loose connections through small press conventions and music APAs.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 20:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Since no one around here lives within a 20 minute drive from me (i.e. completely doable for me), and since I really haven't been here an incredibly long period of time (which would, I feel, be vital to planning any sort of offline get-together meeting with you lot), none of you would be considered my "real life" friends. At least not yet. If by some miracle of chance one of you were to move down here and we were to meet up and have a grand old time, I could consider one of you a "real life" friend, but as for now those of you whom I consider ILX friends will be my "Internet" friends only. I highly doubt that any of you would know any of my "real life" friends, so there isn't even an overlap in that sort of sense.

― Jane Datsun (Dee the Lurker), Tuesday, 19 August 2003 21:10 (twenty-two years ago)

On many occasions I've introduced ppl to other ppl only to have somebody act like a complete asshole. Then afterward one bunch will always bitch about how crap the other bunch is. I feel personally affronted when ppl do that, like they can't even at least try to be nice for a few hours to make my life easier. Fuck everybody.

― dave q, Wednesday, 20 August 2003 08:40 (twenty-two years ago)

My different groups of friends have rarely overlapped, and increasingly I seem to meet up with each of my friends individually, even when they know each other. I think this trend is to do with the difficulty of actually arranging social events when jobs and other commitments loom large and we all live and work on different schedules. It sucks really.

Last birthday, 5 groups (Sinister friends, Matt's friends, my school friends, my other school friends and my uni friends) all met each other and didn't exactly mingle, but this is as much to do with me being a lazy hostess as any inherent gulf...

― Archel (Archel), Wednesday, 20 August 2003 08:53 (twenty-two years ago)

I have a few different, non-overlapping groups of online friends: ILE, writing folks (largely from when I used to write fanfic), and a vague accumulation of people I know from places where I'm not active anymore, plus people I've met through them; the last group I tend to keep in contact with via Livejournal.

I like that those groups don't interact. I have them for different reasons. The writer folks are mostly people I like discussing specific ideas with. The LiveJournal people are often people I've met or still see offline (it includes most of my New Orleans friends who I don't see anymore). ILE is its own thing, and I like keeping it that way.

Offline, I stay in touch less and less frequently with my New England friends, for all the usual reasons. My New Orleans friends I keep in touch with through email and LJ (and I'll be back for a week in November!) I don't have Bloomington friends per se, but there are classmates I'm friendly with, and I guess some of them may be in my next Spanish class as well.

― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, 20 August 2003 17:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Lexington FAP this weekend! Friday night at Busters. What say you, lexingtonians?

― Emilymv (Emilymv), Wednesday, 20 August 2003 17:27 (twenty-two years ago)

three years pass...

i have always compartmentalized my friends, for some reason it just works better that way, the few occasions where "mixing" occured were awkward

― bobby bedelia, Monday, 21 May 2007 06:42 (eighteen years ago)

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