G-SPOT: How social media created a myth of strangers as friends

My friend Maggie was finally cremated after a marathon 58-day stay in a hospital mortuary caused mainly by administrative red tape involving the British High Commission and the Tourist Police.

Maggie, who was one of the most orderly and organised people I knew, the type to cross every ‘T’ and dot every ‘I’, would have been appalled, to say the least.

In the end it took the courts to step in. The whole mess took a toll on relationships between people she knew in Malindi and elsewhere, even though all felt they were working in her best interests. 

Like many people, Maggie had many different groups of friends and people she associated with, not all of whom liked each other much, or even at all. She was not the kind of person to be particularly bothered by this and just took people as they came.

As I thought about this, I felt I could relate as I have also had different groups of friends and associates. In fact, I used to joke that if they all met up at my funeral or some such occasion, there would be ruffled feathers, to say the least.

One day, I decided that instead of waiting until my demise, I would host a party, throw them all together and see how things went.

So I got together three good buddies from work, some of my LGBTQIA activist comrades, some old school pals, my creative friends and a whole bunch of people I had collected and connected with on the path of life, including my next-door neighbours. 

Of course there were some people who fit in more than one category, and Nairobi society being a village of sorts, there were a fair few whose paths had crossed before one way or another, without reference to me.

The party could have been a social disaster or developed into a riotous bar brawl, but in the end, it was a rip roaring success. It turned out so well that some of my disparate friends met and in some cases even became better friends with each other than they were with me.

Having almost arrived at maturity, I have taken to heart the wise words of an ex of mine, who said that if you had more “good friends” than fingers, you were doing something wrong.

In those days, I considered almost everyone I met and got on with a good friend. So I'd be introducing people to each other saying, “This is so and so, my really good friend. Meet XYZ, my other really good friend.” Nowadays, I split people I know into friends and associates. It's much easier.

Friends are individuals with whom you share a deep, emotional and long-term bond, offering mutual support and trust. On the other hand, associates are typically linked through shared contexts like work, school or common interests, representing a more casual, professional or superficial connection. 

So, for instance, friends know your personal life and secrets, while associates often only know you within a specific, limited context. The point of friends is that they provide emotional support, shared experiences and life’s ups and downs; associates are often for networking, collaboration and shared goals.

Friendships require active maintenance, emotional investment and shared time, whereas associate relationships may end when the shared activity, such as a job, ends.

Friends tend to prioritise you in their life; associates may focus more on their own professional or personal agenda. While associates can become friends, the key distinction lies in the depth of the connection, trust and mutual, non-transactional care.

The problem comes, as I discovered recently, when people you have met but have yet to decide where to place, think of you as their firm friend and start wanting to meet up and hang out with you.

For example, I met a couple of people recently who immediately wanted to slide into my DMs even though we barely know each other's names. I haven't decided whether they are worth the investment in time, dedication and commitment. 

Social media has had a hand in delivering this warped idea of friendship. Social media conflates friends and associates, and things such as the "friend" label end up as a catch-all, treating casual acquaintances as equal to intimate friends.