Greetings my friends. Yes, friends. I am calling you all that because isn’t that what we are? On a close personal intimate lets-chat-over-dinner, face-to-face sort of way perhaps not. But on a symbolic level? Why not?
Both corporeal and virtual mobility as well as the vast, networked complexity of our global society is deeming the old notion of ‘friend’ obsolete. As we attempt to set a straight definition for the chance-encounters and informal ties we are recreating within our daily lives, how are we defining those with whom we are interacting with? A friend? A best friend? A social tie? An acquaintance? A networker? How can we categorize the person we talk to at the bus stop on a daily basis, the individual we chatted with online for the past two hours, or that someone who we were visiting on vacation last summer? We are increasingly stumbling for words or exact definitions. Moreover, the actual functional magnitude these friends have on a societal perspective, known as the social capital, is just beginning to be understood. What is the relationship between who we know, and how we function and become mobile within the global complex web we are living in?
This is an issue I am currently investigating. Do you have thoughts? Who are friends to you? Is it a good thing having all those facebook profiles just a click away?
For those of you still interested and care to read more, I suggest:
Adams, Rebecca G. and Allan, Graham. . 1998. Placing Friendship in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
boyd, dana. 2006. “Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing Community into being on social network sites.” First Monday Online, (December). http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_12/boyd/#author (October, 2007)
Chambers, Deborah. 2006. New Social Ties: contemporary connections in a fragmented society. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
The fundamental flaw you made was labeling friendship into categories.
This really caused a lot of problems on couchsurfing . Where people met and said hello and gave each other a rating of “close friend”.Also the verification idea had a loop hole where 3 people got together and vouched for each other. This gave people fake reputations. In the real world people like to know you for what you have to share and not for how many friends you have or how many people vouched for you .
When you are someone friends you just know… Try giving friendship points and it no longer is friendship but a commodity. Its good to investigate and research but when it causes problems on a global scale it needs to be re-evaluated.
friendships are dynamic and not static like numbers on couchsurfing. Also those hidden values (how well you know x) . Did it just help you in your research or did it help the members who filled it up ?
Anyways how to see a more dynamic system in the future.
Hi there Michael.
I don’t think it was ever the intent of the Couchsurfing admin who designed the friend list (me included) to comodify friendship in any way. But point well taken about the general issue.
I don’t know if I get your point about gathering friends in order to show off on Couchsurfing. If you look at where most individuals initiated their friendship, you’ll find most of them to be from offline meetings. If someone would really want to collect as many friends as possible in a system like Couchsurfing, I think they’d have to be doing a lot of meeting up. Which would take a lot of time. I don’t think you can link this model to something like a online-only myspace.
I do think it is helpful to see how strongly individuals know each other. Glancing at a profile, you’re right away able to see if the person has 100 acquaintances from only online contacts (as you mentioned, collecting just to show off) or do they have 10 friends who have in-depth things to say about the individual?
If you think studying friendship is useless let me know why you think so. I’m interested to hear it.
Thanks for your insight!
Paula
Thank you paula
For your views on the topic
Paula “do they have 10 friends who have in-depth things to say about the individual?”
This is where the problem lies . The rating of “best friend” is misused with 2 meeting with a traveller they become best friend.Are they really best friend is the question. was this foreseen when the matrix was created?
Now best friend would mean different things to different people. What would you terms as a best friend?
I would term a best friend as someone who accepts you for who you are with all your positive points and negative points. And would be there when you are happy ,sad , sick.
Studying the No7 links this is definitely not true in 70% of the cases.
Paula “If someone would really want to collect as many friends ”
Well you need to take in consideration the status symbol .Like I got 100 friends , you have none. Also friendships are links to ambassadorship and also to where you are listed on the top 20 to be able to host.So if you are on page 2 you chances of getting a guest are pretty slim.
A couple of unanswered question about those hidden values ” how well do you know this person”
How does it help the member ?
Paula “If you think studying friendship is useless let me know why you think so. I’m interested to hear it.”
Thanks you for your openness in hearing the other side of the coin.
The site is about traveling and cultural understanding and list i said in my previous post
In the real world people like to know you for what you have to share and not for how many friends you have or how many people vouched for you .
Also friendships are dynamic and not static like numbers on couchsurfing
This means when you know a person better they can either be someone you don’t want as your friend or someone you want to spend the rest of your list with (lots of people hooking up and getting married ).So numbers from 1-7 do not show and quantify friendships. Also injecting these numbers into a community can either make a community stronger or weaker (this is where each one of us to ponder..)
To understand more about friendships on sites. It would be a good idea for log in once in a while and see what is happening on the brainstorm (who is posting and what friend links they have with the others posting) .You used to do this when in MTL but have not seen you online that much since a while (guess you are super busy with other things).Point here is follow up on systems set up is essential to tweak tust matrixes and also see if it makes or breaks a community . Just my views.
Cheers
Michael
Michael!
It’s strange that you say that the term ‘best friend’ is ‘misused.’ I think I do understand what is happening when individuals are meeting up offline, and that something is most often a quite intense contact, filled with intimate (if not brief) discussion. Why should we impose a set definition of friendship?
So much about the way we interact, the way we network, the way we are experiencing co-presence is changing and that’s all I’m trying to observe. I think saying “that’s not what real friendship is” would be closing your eyes on what is actually changing in the definition of friendship, especially a friendship among individuals who are mobile.
So that’s my two cents. As for why I don’t log into the site much anymore, is because I am not currently studying Couchsurfing, but am trying to look at the larger context of mobile friendship.
I do want my research to be seen and heard by all members of the CS community, and if you have any ideas on how I can do so, please fill me in.
Cheers!
Paula
paula “what is happening when individuals are meeting up offline, and that something is most often a quite intense contact, filled with intimate (if not brief) discussion.”
When a person is not going to see that person again . Nor going to keep in touch with that person would that be called best friends?
Again it comes down the the very definition of “best friend” “close friend” “good friend” . I really do not understand how an intense offline meeting makes one close,good,best friends.
“intimate (if not brief) discussion”
Is usually called a acquaintance/friend .How deep would someone know another in a few minutes,hours or 2 days?
Paula “that’s not what real friendship is” would be closing your eyes on what is actually changing in the definition of friendship, especially a friendship among individuals who are mobile.”
The above statements are exact reason why static number 6-close friend ,7 =best friend is non factual. (number cannot gauge friendships which are subjective).friendships change by the day and by the minutes in online/offline relationships.Friendship the word is misleading . People may make a person their best friend on looks alone (and yes there have been instances of this) . friendship level are also determined by what the individual wants out of the other person. online/offline alliances have many reason infatuation.love,common enemy.
I still do not know what your definition of these terms close,good,best friends are .
This again bring up how deeply involved a person is in a community for a long term to distinguish between how relationship online,offline,trust are connected.
Paula “I do want my research to be seen and heard by all members of the CS community”
Happy to hear this because after MTL the impression was the network was used for personal research and not really anything to be given back to the community.
I suggest posting them on the hospitalityguide (adia.info).Or on couchsurfing (where I am sure you know all the LT and casey)
I am really happy to have found a place to ask questions which have waited 1 year(crash/MTL) to be asked.
Michael,
If you wanted to ask me these questions one year ago, why have you waited so long? You could have asked me these questions at the moment you heard I was interested in this, perhaps you could have helped me develop this research.
In saying “I really do not understand how an intense offline meeting makes one close,good,best friends.” you are right, YOU do not understand, but some other people clearly do because they are clearly using the ‘best friend’ tab. And yes, of course friendship is not static, which is why it’s quite easy to change one’s status on Couchsurfing. After a few hours of knowing my own best friends, I knew we’d be ‘best friends.’ I interviewed many people who experienced closeness, platonic love, best-friendness within hours of knowing someone. All of this is worth taking into consideration.
I admit there are flaws with such a system, but any system where you try to categorize personal experience is problematic. Such is the problem with macro, quantitative research.
Which is why I am a researcher on the ethnographic level. I do fully feel that I could not have been more immersed in the CS community at the time I did my research. I have been a member since the site started, I hosted and traveled for two years, meeting dozens and dozens of CS users. I conducted interviews. I have exhausted every possible research approach to this hospitality network, which is why I aim to compare these results to trust and friendship in other contexts.
As for posting the results, I did so on Couchsurfing, (posted my thesis) but I don’t know where the page is at the moment. Things got changed around after the Rotterdam collective and I’m not sure.
We can post it again of course.
Talk soon,
Paula
paulabialski-thesisma-intimatetourism-final-engl.pdf
By using simple common sense, a user will come to the conclusion that
somebody with many friends is, in fact, more likely to be trustworthy.
This is the exact reason why people add everyone they even say hello to offline (not difficult in a meet up of 50 people not much time invested also ) .To give the false sense to being trustworthy and by incidents which have happened on couchsurfing this definitely shows they were not trustworthy.
Also in the past year peoples online actions have changed the trust levels but online and offline .A good person to verify this would be chris. In a community where people meet online more than offline (travel community). Peoples online actions show how trustable they are and this may or may not translate to a different in real life meeting. But the distrust build up by actions online do change the trust levels for ever.
“the website system forced users to rate each other on a scale of 1-10, 10 being most trustworthy).”
forcing people to quantify their friendships on a scale of 1-10 is what made friendship on couchsurfing look like a commodity which are just numbers. Also the forcing caused users to just randomly fill in the information .