Young People, Overwhelmed by Friends, Turns to Friendinis

Friendships seen evolving in face of social networking, technology.

Is companionship-light a fad, or a new staple in our emotional diet?

Laura Bellingkamp has no time. This 33 year old New York marketing consultant has met over a hundred cool new acquaintances on services like Friendster and J-date. She goes out every night, but at parties she meets more people, not less. And in addition to her work and social schedule, Laura must leave time to process all the content captured on her TIVO, iPod and four voice mail accounts. She’s exhibit one of what techno-sociologist Linda Stone calls “the continuous partial attention generation.”

Academics say the problem faced by Laura and those like her is how to deal with all those budding friendships. A hundred years ago a person was lucky to meet 15 new acquaintances a year. Now thanks to technology, people often meet that many in an hour. “Our species was never programmed to adapt to such an onslaught of potential intimacy” says Harvard biologist Irving Bockman. “ Yet we still have an innate need to meet people. So you can see the frightening implication of this codependent cycle. We now believe Traumatic Friendship Stress Disorder is rapidly emerging as the premier psychological ailment of our era.”

A new startup thinks it has the answer and it will require no lengthy FDA approvals. Friendini Worldwide will soon offer people like Laura an alternative to friendships with all their commitments, expectations, and overhead. Launching later this year, Friendini.com promises its users a patented commitment-free, friendship-light form relationship. Says founder Hailey Throckmorton, “We’ve found that most people can handle hundreds of Friendinis annually, but they freak out after just a dozen or so regular friends in just a few weeks”

Critics question whether Friendinis are a fad, or an enduring part of our social fabric. “We’ve had lo-cal cola, lo-cal chips, and now comes lo-cal friendships,” says Terence Loughton of Cambridge University. “What’s next, lo-cal pets? I think its just passing fancy, like push technology” But in that Throckmortin sees truth and affirmation. “The pet analogy rings true to our customers. Pets don’t cause their owners any grief, and neither do friendinis. And you don’t even have to walk a friendini. I tell you, that gets investors awfully excited!”

Comments

[Daniel D.]

Did you know friendini.com is a registered domain? I wonder who's behind "Manhattan Studios", the domain owner...

[Tom Guarriello]

What kind of idiotic construction is, "Traumatic Friendship Stress Disorder?" This is the kind of cheapening of truly debilitating conditions that leads people to think that any kind and level of emotional distress is equivalent with any other.

Shame on these people for their facile cleverness. They've debased the experience of victims of life-altering experiences by implying, through their disingenuously cheap use of language, that, somehow, meeting too many people on line today is in the same league as the PTSD we'll see for decades as a result of the war in Iraq.

I say, deny them tenure.

[Peter Hirshberg]

This post generated several comments on this blog and at Auren Hoffman's.

Yes I am very familiar with Manhattan Studios which actually registered Friendini...it was one of the first Silicon Alley ventures and is run by my dear friend and colleague Pam Meyer who coined the term Friendini, and is now about to launch several social networking services that are advances beyond Craigslist or Linked In. And she's been getting offers offers on Friendini.com domain for a while.........stay tuned for her efforts. In the mean time it struck me as a great brand name to use to make fun of sites that offer the possibility of more "friends" than you know what to do with.

But not eveyone saw the satire. Or perhaps readers just got pissed. Tom (above) thinks "Traumatic Friendship Stress Disorder" makes light of real diseases. The point of the language is to evoke the cadence of a real disorder to make people look at the superficiality of what passes for friendship today. It was not to make fun of those injured in Iraq.

Auren Hoffman blogged this post at http://summation.typepad.com/summation/2005/01/young_people_ov.html and got another critical comment. "Perhaps the proper question here is whether people are underwhelmed (rather than overwhelemed) by friends because they fail to see something in the reltionship that triggers a moment, an idea, and action that is shared or conveyed?"

Thats a great question!

[Helen Robertson]

friends either build you up or pull you down. Count how many lame ducks you have in your life as opposed to how many people are a possitive contribution to you as a person. Friendship at its very best is based on trust.

[alan]

excellent point

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