Based Camp： Friends are a Pointless Indulgence
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Summary
In this episode, we talk about the 4 types of friends we think exist, and how to determine which ones you should keep in your life. We also talk about why we think there are only 4 kinds of friends, and why you should have them.
Transcript
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The really important thing to remember about this is that while you and everyone else is the
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protagonist of their own story, you are a side character in the story of everyone else you will
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ever meet. And so a lot of people say, I just want people to see me for who I am. That is far
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too nuanced to be a good side character, right? Would you like to know more? Hi, Octavian. Do you
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want to say hi to YouTube? Yeah. Okay. Say hi, YouTube. Hi, YouTube. So we had one person on one of our
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videos saying, you guys can do more interviews when you start running out of interesting things
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to talk about. And I love this because they don't know. I am on easy mode with YouTube. My wife told
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me one day, she goes, Malcolm, if you don't find an interesting thing to discuss with me, because
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every morning we do a strategy walk where we walk together for about an hour. You don't think of an
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interesting thing to discuss with me before I wake up. My life is the framing device for Arabian
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tales. That is my life. I have to keep this woman happy or she'll kill me. And I have to keep her
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happy with controversial, weird takes. You guys are just getting the dregs of these morning walks.
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Yeah. You're having the microwave leftovers from my first take, my prima nocte. What can we say?
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I'm sorry, guys. Yes. Anyway, today I thought we could talk about our theory of friendship,
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which we actually developed pretty early on in our marriage. And this was a listener request.
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Yeah. And it comes down to the thought of what use are other people to us? More specifically,
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what I mean is if you're going to go out there and you're going to engage with people and you're
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an extreme introvert, you really need a civic motivation to do that. Specifically as extreme
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introverts, we really need a reason to interact with people. But we also think that everyone
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actually interacts with people for a reason. They don't just quote unquote need friends. And so we
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built a model to determine what types of friends there are, which can also make it much easier to
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determine whether a friendship is worth keeping and really help you understand the dynamics of the
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friendship. But more importantly, if you want to have friends, it's really helpful to understand what
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kind of friend you are to them, what your value proposition is to them as a friend. And that
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actually has helped us a ton because there are all sorts of people that we like to be friends with.
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And we need to understand what it is in their lives that we're going to fill in if we are to take that
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position, to earn it essentially. Well, people will treat their friends very differently depending on the
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value proposition that you're providing. Exactly. So let us start. There are four types of friends,
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by the way, per our model. We will also discuss in this conversation, people's other complaints
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and suggestions that there are other types of friends, and we will attempt to refute them. Of course,
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if you have additional ideas of types of friends that exist, share them in the comments, and we will see
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just how much we agree with you or not. But I bet that this model can be expanded. So honestly, we'd like
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your feedback. So first type of friend, trash friend, as far as we are concerned. Although you probably have
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friends like this, and you are an idiot for having them. This first type of friend is the convenience
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friend. What is a convenience friend? It is someone who in the show Parks and Rec, they are referred
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to as workplace proximity associates rather than friends, because this is someone who you are friends
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with merely because they are there. And sometimes because you want company. So great examples of
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friends who are convenience friends or workplace proximity associates are classmates, roommates,
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neighbors, people who go to the same church as you, people who are in clubs with you,
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coworkers who you like and hang out with after work, people that you have met a long time ago that
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you've just kept up with. A good way to think of this group is the people who you are adjacent to
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in life, whether it's in school or in work. These are not people that you've really sorted for,
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right? It's just a random assortment of the population generally.
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You're not convenience friends with everyone. You're convenience friends with the people you're
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compatible with. You will inevitably sort for the top, let's say 20% compatibility people
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within your adjacent environment, whether it's neighbors, schools, anything like that. And those
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people will become your friends. And those are convenience friends. Now, convenience friends make
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a lot of sense. Almost everyone always has some convenience friends. And they are of high utility
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to have in the moment if they exist within your current context. So if you are currently at a company
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or currently at school, it's very useful to have convenient friends within that context
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because it's useful in playing into the larger social hierarchy of a school. And to that extent,
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they might be a different type of friend that we'll get to next, but broadly speaking, they make
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sense. Where convenient friends become really toxic is when you have a convenience friend that
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is from a stage of life that you are no longer in. This would be like friends from high school
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that you're still friends with as an adult. There is no reason that those people in high school,
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unless you have a really unique childhood, would be optimized out of all the people in the world
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to be like high match friends for you, right? In reality, we would say that what is happening when
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somebody still stays friends with somebody who was originally a convenience friend is they move into
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the next category of friendship, which we call self-image reinforcement friends.
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Or character reinforcing friends. Yeah. Or character reinforcing friends. And these are friends
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who you are friends with because they help reinforce some image you have of yourself. The most classic
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example here would be the like gay best friend a woman may have because she thinks she needs like a
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gay best friend to fit some stereotype she saw in media. Adding to the gay best friend example is like
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the high powered business women that you meet with and have cocktails with because you see it done on sex in
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the city. And you're like, of course I need that. I need my girls today. Or like a minority who somebody
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is friends with just so people don't call them racist. And what we need to make clear with this
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type of friend is it's not everyone who happens to be like the gay best friend of a woman falls into
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this category. Not every minority of person is friends with are they friends with to prove that
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they're not racist. But there are some people in the world who choose friends because they fit these
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roles. And you can play yourself up to fit these roles better. Sorry, I'm going to say that better
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because this is something that's really important that we say earlier in the video so we don't look
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like we're saying all. Okay. To be clear here, we are not saying that gay people who are someone's best
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friends fit this narrative. What we are saying is people who choose a friend specifically because
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they fit some gay archetype, that is this type of friendship. So for example, a gay person may not
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fit this archetype, even if they are gay, if they aren't like the sassy whatever, because that's what's
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needed to fill this role in the person's story that they're trying to tell. And a lot of people in the
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world are just essentially trying to create character sheets for themselves. That is their
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primary driver in life. It's not to affect some change upon the world. It's they have a story
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of who they want to be. And often they pick that story up from media. And now they're trying to tell
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that story. Yeah, I think it's it cannot be understated how much of a role popular media plays
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and character reinforcing friends and the type of friends they want. So I also do think that understanding
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really like top sitcoms, dramas, movies, etc, will help you understand the sorts of characters
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supporting roles, of course, people are looking for, and help you understand what kind of person
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you might need to be to fit in that role. You can also look at, for example, people's life stages,
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because that can also really influence what people are looking for in certain stages of their life.
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If you really want to befriend people who are more mature in their life, maybe 50 years plus,
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and really successful in their careers, people in those positions often really have self images or
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characters that are mentors that are wise that give people advice. So coming to them as an acolyte in
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the right kind of way could get you a good position in their life, for example. So I think looking at
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life stages, and also what seems to satisfy people the most and how they'd like to see themselves the
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most in those life stages is really important. So sometimes I think maybe for like,
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girls in their early 20s, they want like a wing woman, like a girl who they can like travel and
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party with and we go on adventures and we have fun and we have spa days. And for guys like a good
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wingman who like brings in adventure and supports them and like has their back and pushes them a
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little bit like those kinds of characters make a lot of sense. So when you are looking, we'll say you
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have a target, you have a target friend, you have to look at their age, you have to look at the media
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they consume. And this is actually pretty easy to do with social media as long as someone's online.
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So essentially, when it comes to the character reinforcing friend, there's this concept that
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we're all I think pretty familiar with where everyone is the protagonist in their story.
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But to be a protagonist, you need supporting actors, you need extras, you need the right kind
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of set dressing to be who you are. Why this is really useful to know about is if you understand
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the kind of character that somebody else wants to be, you can figure out how you would help them
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complete that character. And if you help them complete that character in some way, you have
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an instant VIP location in their friendscape. And the really important thing to remember about this
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is that while you and everyone else is the protagonist of their own story, you are a side character
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in the story of everyone else you will ever meet. And so a lot of people say, I just want people to
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see me for who I am. That is far too nuanced to be a good side character, right?
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Yeah. And what we mean when we say a convenience friend, who your friends was after the convenient
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period as a character reinforcing friend, what we mean is the primary reason you haven't dumped
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them as a friend is because you don't want to be the type of person who dumps friends. So really,
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the reason you haven't dumped them as a friend is because of the narrative they tell you about who you
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are as a person, which is a really silly reason to stay friends with someone. And a lot of people
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are like, oh, they don't care. They've got other friends. And frankly, it's healthier for them to
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make new friends who are better fits for them given where they are in the world at that time.
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So true. They're almost like a friendship blackmail because it's like this dirty little secret that
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you don't want to have out that like you dump friends or that you're like a heartless person who
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leaves your childhood friends behind. And it really, I think can make people feel bad and feel
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a lot of cognitive dissonance because like, why am I spending my time? Or I think this also,
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it doesn't just happen with people that you move away from or grow apart from, but from with friends
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who become toxic. And I think toxic friends actually use this dynamic, like they subconsciously
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understand it. And they use this dynamic to twist the knife and stop friends from dumping them.
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So another way this bad dynamic shows up is I think a lot of toxic friends or friends who are
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becoming exploitative actually subtly or subconsciously understand this dynamic and
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leverage it. Like how dare you're abandoning me just because I'm deeply depressed and in need right
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now. Like how could you possibly forget my birthday, et cetera, et cetera. And they use that because they
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understand that you see yourself as a good person, as a good friend, as a caring person, and they frame
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you as not being caring when you don't meet their unreasonable demands. Understanding that as well,
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understanding that people are manipulating you along those grounds. They're manipulating you by
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taking something that matters a lot to you, which is your personal character and trying to put it in
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danger, hold it hostage, essentially. It's hopefully that would make it easier for some people to drop
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toxic friends. Although I guess it's hard to recognize in the moment, but that's still something
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it is definitely a real dynamic that is leveraged by a lot of people. I think the same happens sometimes
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with family members, et cetera. Like how could you do this? Ultimately they cause a lot of harm.
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Anything more about character re-enforcing friends?
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I would just add one more note, which is that Malcolm's point that everyone wants to be this
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like complicated, subtle person cannot be emphasized enough. We've had people who really take our advice
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on being a two-dimensional character to heart, and they'll send to us their draft character sheets
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and ask us, Hey, what do you think? And their draft character sheets of teen attributes that are
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positive, like three that are negative, but they're actually really positives. I don't think
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it cannot be overstated how simple is. You've got three positive attributes and three negative
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attributes that are super clear and actually really negative. That's it. Like you have to be so
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two-dimensional. So that should also be emphasized because I think people just can't get over the fact
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they're so unique and special and nuanced that it's hard to understand that you have to be an
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extra on somebody else's performance. So our favorite type of friend, Malcolm is the utility
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friend. Yes. Yes. This is just someone who's directly useful to you in some way.
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So in childhood, this might be like the kid with the best video game console.
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Right. It could be somebody who intellectually pushes you forward. It could be somebody who gives you
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access to additional things. It could be somebody who gives you new ideas. It could be the point is
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that you are receiving some sort of a tangible or mental benefit from being friends with this person.
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Yeah. So examples of utility are, they go all over the place. One could be like, honestly,
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like they're wealthy. And when you're with them, you get to do fancy things, or maybe they're really
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attractive and you just want to be around someone attractive, or maybe they're a boyfriend or
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girlfriend and you just want sex from them. Maybe it is because, yeah, like Malcolm said,
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they teach you something new. Our favorite types of utility friends are people who expose us to new
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ideas and intellectually push us. So that's, of course, the first thing you would go to, Malcolm.
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I think for most people, utility friends are the type of friend who manufactures popularity. And by that,
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they are the type of friend who organizes the gatherings. They organize the group vacations.
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They organize parties. They invite people, like they make everything happen. So the utility that
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those people offer is literally providing opportunities and organizing opportunities
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for socializing because so few people actually take the initiative to do that. And one thing that
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we're going to be teaching our kids so early is that like the key to popularity has very little to do
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with necessarily charisma. You obviously can't be like the worst socially, but really the key to
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popularity is being the person to make something happen. If you are taking the initiative and getting
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people together to go somewhere or to come to your house, you host, you do things, you keep the
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conversation going in a group thread, you are the popular one because so few people take initiative.
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So that is one of the easiest ways to become a utility friend. But I think understanding what people
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want, what matters to them, what challenges they're facing, make it really easy to understand how you
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could be a utility friend to them. And to be honest with you, because we really value this type of
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friendship the most whenever we meet new people and we like them and we want to be friends with them.
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We're always like, what do you need right now? What do you want? What type of interest do you need?
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Because we want, this is a two-parter. Like one is we want to be useful to them. If we are utility
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friends to them, we will be friends with them. But also every time that we are useful to them is an
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excuse to reach out to them, to engage, to talk, et cetera. Yeah. And being the connector is a very
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useful way to be a utility friend, as Simone was saying, because whenever you connect to people,
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like I connect a startup with a venture capitalist, right? And it's a verified connection.
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I am doing a favor to both of those individuals and they both really value that favor. And I'm getting
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like two social credits for that. And the key to being this type of a connector, especially if you're
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young now, really make sure you take notes on the people you're in conversations with. You should have
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a list of all of the people you've talked to, their contact information, and everything you know about
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them. And then occasionally hit up the people on this list who are most likely to be useful to other
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people who are part of sort of your cloud of individuals. Because that's a very low cost way,
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both low cost socially and financially, to be a good utility friend. And outside of that,
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hosting parties is a very low cost way to be a utility friend to a large group of people. To
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the extent where even though we're very introverted, we have found a system for going to Manhattan once
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every other month and hosting a party there just to stay of utility and top of mind to people who
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we're interacting with. What's the final type of friend, Simone? You said there were four.
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Yeah. So in the past, we've only discussed three and we've only come up with three,
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but I want to propose one bonus one because I want to prime everyone who might leave comments
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on additional types that like, Hey, anyone can contribute something. And I'm going to throw
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something out in Malcolm and you can pull it apart and either say this is a legitimate
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addition to the Canon or not. Sound good. Okay. Okay. I'm going to propose the fourth type of friend
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is a, we'll say a culture friend. So this could count as someone who's also a fan of your top
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baseball team, someone who's a member of your religion, someone who is also a really huge fan
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of some subculture, basically someone with whom you share a culture. I'll never forget my mom
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explaining to me in part, her love of baseball. She later in life became a huge fan of the San
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Francisco Giants and would wear a Giants baseball cap, had a Giants t-shirt. And she talked to me
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a couple of times about how awesome it felt to go to a game and feel just so united with a bunch
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of people that she had no other shared background with. And also she would walk around with her
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like Giants signaling stuff. And immediately she would have friends and it wasn't because of some
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character reinforcing thing per se. I think it's really different. I think it's because
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whatever. No, no, no, hold on. Let me, let me make my case. The cultural signifier that you're
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wearing, whatever that may be, tells them immediately that you have a shared context,
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you have a shared language and you are a safe place for each other. So I think often people get
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really stressed going out into the world. It can be, everything is uncertain, unpredictable.
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Sometimes it's really hard to predict people. So especially in a really diverse heterogeneous
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society, like in the United States, going out and interacting people can be tough because
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you don't know where they're coming from. You don't know what their expectations are.
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Social contracts are very mismatched in many places. So you're going to get some form of
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conflict or you're going to insult someone by mistake. When you know someone has a shared
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culture with you, be that a sports team or a fan universe, like you see that, like they
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have some Naruto pin or something. You're like, Oh my God, so scary. Like then like suddenly
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that tension goes away and you are instant friends on this thing. And there's this camaraderie
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Okay. I will. So I'd say that really it's either utility friend or a character reinforcing
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friend seems to be what you're describing, but I will say that it's derived enough that
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you could potentially consider it a new category with this understanding that for example, you
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think about us trying to create a culture of aligned families who are having a high number
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of kids. So our kids grow up understanding our cultural values, understanding that they're
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not just completely weirdos because the other families that were part of this group was they
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also do weird things like name their kids, weird things. They also, they're very interested
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in deviating from society. They're also very pro natalist, very focused on, on success and
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cultural accelerationism in that they're really like technophilic people. They're really focused
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on how do we move forwards to whatever comes after this stage of society. So they're really,
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and we do that because that's useful. And I would imagine if you're a conservative Jew or
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you're a conservative Catholic people in your Catholic community or people in your Jewish
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community would feel very different from you and have an intergenerational utility to you.
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But because that utility is so unique and so non-direct, I can say, okay, yes. And then the
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sports fan thing that you're mentioning is if the healthy version of this is religious communities
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or cultural communities, that would be like the pornography version of this, where it's
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just faking what it feels like to have a community that would be of any utility to you. It's just
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masturbating this idea of I'm part of a cultural group when it's not really, it's just a sports
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team. It's not going to help impart like values to your family or your kids, but it is fulfilling
00:20:56.320
sort of an ancestral need there. Okay. I'll agree with that. I would also say it warrants a separate
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category because the tactics in terms of tapping into that are quite different. So it's about finding
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the right signalers. And of course, bonus points, if it's like a deep cut signaler that only insiders
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would know. And you see this a lot, for example, with cryptic bumper stickers that people put on
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their cars. And I see these all the time. And I'm like, I know that this is this kind of thing.
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And I wish I knew what it was. And I always try to Google them and it's really annoying.
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Or you even see this with cultural groups, like Mormons with garments, where if you know what to
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look for, you can tell someone's wearing their garments, but you probably don't know if you're an
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outsider. So you feel this extra camaraderie. It's a powerful dynamic.
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Yeah. One thing I wanted to close this out with, because I think a lot of people,
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they hear this and they're like, oh, that's like an overly utilitarian way of viewing other humans.
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That's really immoral to just put people in these simplistic categories. And I think that's very
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much a character reinforcing friend attitude. The type of person who over-associates with character
00:22:04.960
Right. But I guess what I'd say is I actually think it's very immoral to take that position
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because I think that a lot of people get the aesthetic of being a moral person confused
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with actually doing good in the world. Our lives are very short. Every unit of time we have,
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every interaction we have is an opportunity for us to enact the sort of change in the world we want
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or make the world better along some specific line. You get so many units of good you can do for the world
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a day. And that is, I think, what a person's quality of character should be modeled off of,
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especially when they do things that seem to hurt in the moment or that would cause a negative
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judgment. So I'd say it's very much if you're in a relationship with someone, but you know that
00:22:51.280
relationship is toxic and hurting them, the right thing to do is to leave that relationship.
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The wrong thing to do is to stay in that relationship because that's what a quote unquote good
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person, the aesthetic of being a good person would do. Yet I think that all of our friends,
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even the ones that aren't actively toxic, if you're in a relationship with them for a character
00:23:12.060
reinforcing reason, because you're doing it to tell a story of how you're a good person,
00:23:17.260
then that is taking from you optimization that you could put into the world towards making a world
00:23:25.880
And I think that some of the worst types of people, if you want to know the people who are
00:23:30.860
able to commit often the most evil are the ones who have in their brain, I am a good person.
00:23:38.240
Ask, what does a good person do in this moment? Yeah.
00:23:41.680
Right. Because what you are asking when you ask that is what does narratively a good person do in
00:23:48.280
The really dangerous thing about having that mindset is you begin to define the types of things you have
00:23:55.660
done in your past and the types of things people in whatever cultural group you're in as
00:24:00.460
thematically good, which can make it impossible to see when the group you're in begins to do evil
00:24:06.980
things. So here's the one last thing I'd like you to help me work through. And actually, maybe you
00:24:13.320
won't be able to, but other people can if they watch this and help us in the comments. One of our
00:24:17.960
friends who I really love and respect mostly because she and I hold super different views who I'm talking
00:24:23.840
about, we love her so much. She was like, when I told her this model of friendship, what about love?
00:24:30.140
There are just some people that I unconditionally love for who they are. And I, we talked about it.
00:24:37.340
So love is an emotion we evolved as part of our from our cultural perspective. An emotion you evolved
00:24:43.600
is something that can fire randomly, basically. Yeah.
00:24:47.160
Love can force you to form a pair bond with someone. And I guess you could like, I don't want
00:24:53.060
you as a kid in the room use the M word, but you could M that, that emotional subset, but that is
00:24:59.180
really not meaningful, not in a wider context. And we talk in our books about how love actually works,
00:25:07.540
right? Love appears to be emotion that originally evolved to get us to not kill our genetic offspring,
00:25:13.060
basically form sort of long-term relationships with someone. Then it got hijacked because evolution
00:25:18.640
is a cheap programmer. So it'll just hijack a preexisting system. When we started forming
00:25:22.800
monogamous pair bonds to reinforce those, we go into this in other podcasts, or we'll do a whole
00:25:29.100
podcast just on how love works. But the reality is love is an emotion. It's an emotion that we feel
00:25:33.820
today because our ancestors who felt it when, in, when presented with certain environmental stimuli
00:25:40.280
had more surviving offspring than the ones that didn't. It is no true mystical Norse compass to
00:25:46.280
anything. That's anything then to summarize, you would argue that what she is really experiencing
00:25:54.320
when she maintains friendships because she loves them for her, it is the utility of experiencing the
00:26:02.140
good feeling of love when she interacts. Well, I might argue it's more of a cultural thing. So keep in
00:26:08.000
mind the friend that she's mentioning here is a secular Quaker. She came from a Quaker tradition and
00:26:14.000
Quaker tradition sees truth is coming from your emotion as coming inside you. So it would make perfect
00:26:22.380
sense that somebody of the Quaker cultural tradition would see your emotions, especially a strong emotion
00:26:28.220
like love as a sign of something beyond that emotion, a sign of some almost supernatural truth to the
00:26:37.220
relationship. Whereas we be coming from a Calvinist cultural tradition and seeing both positive and
00:26:43.760
negative emotions as things that can lead you astray would not, we'd have a high level of suspicion for
00:26:51.700
that. Yes. I love you. And I love that little bumper car rider behind you. I can see the lights going. I
00:27:00.280
really like talking about this. I love this theory of friendship. And I'm keen to add to it like three
00:27:05.280
seems like so few. So we can add to the canon over time. That love it. Yeah. Maybe that needs to be
00:27:12.640
something for like parasocial forms of friendship. I feel like we hopefully over time can add more to
00:27:18.220
the canon. It feels like there could be more than just three categories. So I love talking about this
00:27:23.720
because we always have a chance of finding something new when we do, but yeah, let's hopefully talk
00:27:29.340
about it soon. Allow our friendships to be perverted by love. Let's never let that happen.
00:27:38.340
I love you, Malcolm. Even though we don't value it. Even though I don't value it, I, for whatever
00:27:43.260
reason, feel that way about you. It's only natural, right? We've been in a relationship for a long time.
00:27:48.000
It's only natural. Yeah. It's only natural. That's the problem. That's the problem, Malcolm.
00:27:53.720
It makes me feel good to say that. So I'm just using you to, because we're all wretched. We're
00:27:59.800
all fallen. We all bend our ideal moral framework due to the fact that we're still human. And we
00:28:08.780
shouldn't overly beat ourselves up for being human. And we should allow ourselves to indulge in little
00:28:16.520
emotions here or there. If overall, it increases our efficiency. And that's what I tell myself. That's
00:28:22.140
the wretched little lie I tell myself when I say, Simone, I love you. And I'm really happy