Can you have too many friends?

[Kanzler]

It's obvious that having too few isn't a good thing - it's a hard life not having people you can lean on. But what about having too many? We usually think of friends as good things to have, and we see having lots of friends as a good personality trait. However, we might be overstating the truth whenever we say "yeah, I've got a lot of friends".

There is an 80/20 law, the "law" of the vital few, which states that 80% of y comes from 20% of x. It's an empirical ball-park observation that happens to be shockingly adequately universal. Perhaps 80% of of a company's sales come from 20% of their clients. Perhaps 80% of PokeCommunity's posts come from 20% of our posters. Perhaps, then it applies to friendship as well, with 80% of the value we find in friendship coming from around 20% of our friends. That is, we have a core of "close" friends that stick with us (hopefully) as time passes while we don't grow close to the rest (and if you're cynical, you could say they're more or less disposable).

There is another school of thought that posits that we're born with a certain ballpark amount of "friendship slots" to be filled up through life. As soon as we fill up those slots, we don't - or it becomes very hard to make new friends. Going from this train of thought, if you make lots of close friends early in life, you'll probably have a hard time making new ones as time moves on. It would seem like a wise idea not to make too many friends early on to save a space for later on. It would also seem that you might have to forget old friends to make new ones.

When you consider these two ideas, it seems possible that you can have "too many friends". Friends outside of the 80% wouldn't be of much quality, and if you just added more you'd just be diminishing what's already very small returns. Similarly, after your friendship slots are filled up, the new ones you make might be of doubtful quality. In the age of internet communications it's easier than ever to make friends, and it follows that it's easier than ever to have "too many" - they have "friend" status and you proclaim to be friends with them in daily life but they in reality are less than what they seem to be.

Do you agree with this? Are these theories backed up by your anecdotal evidence - how much do these ideas apply to you? Is this one of those "sad but true" facts of life or is it just baloney? Do you think it'd be worth making changes in your life with these facts in mind - perhaps being careful about who you get close to?

Discuss!

 

[Melody]

One can never have too many friends, but you can easily have too many people demanding your time.

That said, if you have a lot of friends, you may not be able to make very deep connections to them, but at least you'll know they're somewhat on your side.

 

[Corvus of the Black Night]

I hate to be harsh but this is a pretty dumb question. When you can no longer manage your friend you have too many. People tend to stay closer to some than others though, and thus people don't reach the state of "meaningless friends" because in most cases you have someone that you're still very close with. This doesn't apply to everyone and is a very broad scope but in general that's just how friends develop. If people focus on the names and not the people that's when they get lonely.

Just because you know a lot of names doesn't mean you have a lot of friends. It's really that simple.

EDIT: all you really need is one friend. Every other true friend is a gift. Always remember that.

 

[ElGuapoAssassin]

I think after a certain number those "friends" aren't really friends but more acquaintances at that point. I had around 80 "friends" in high school and talk to about maybe 5 of them at the most now. I would think a friend would be someone you talked to and hung out with every single day, or at least a few times a week, a high number of people would kind of make that impossible unless you rotated daily and spent all your free time with them.

 

[Manitee]

I can't really see how you can have lots of friends. If you had that many surely you wouldn't be able to have time for all of them and then some would just become acquaintances.

That's how I see it. I'll never fill up my slots if that is true. I ain't much of a people person tbh.

 

[Overlord Drakow]

Mmm, Mathematical arguments.

With regards to Pareto's Law, assuming that the 'value' of friendship increases proportionally to the quantifiable value of the 20% subset of total friends one has, the concept of 'too many friends' is void. Say person A has 100 friends. 20 of these are 'valuable friends' which correspond to a value of X for friendship value. Now take person B who has 1000 friends. 200 of these would be considered 'valuable friends' which would then equate to a value of 10X for friendship value.

With your second theory, I would think that there would be ways to 'delete' or 'overwrite' previous friendships as old ones fade with time and newer ones take their stead. By which on average, the amount of friends one has would maintain consistency within a reasonable standard of error (+- 5% say) and also that the amount of friends is in equilibrium such that on average for each friendship lost, another is formed.

 

[LoudSilence]

No matter what your viewpoint is on the matter, a "friend" threshold is guaranteed by the fact that you only have 24 hours in a day -- there will be a point where you simply cannot keep up with a certain amount of relationships no matter how much you'd like to. That is what "having too many friends" is.

As for my personal opinion, I think the quality of friendship is inversely proportional to the number of friends. Having less time with a particular friend decreases the strength of a potential bond.

 

[Kanzler]

I thought this topic up because I noticed something about my friendship ... habits, if you will.

Over the course of the summer (when I first became active in the PC community, ie outside of D&D and interacting with other members as people instead of discussion buddies) I made a lot of friends, quickly and easily. This kept on going into the beginning of the school year and all was fine. However, I haven't been feeling very "friendly" as of late, it's been increasingly hard for me to make new friends on PC. Even though I'm talking to more and more people, I don't know, there just seems to be this incredible inertia stopping me from getting to know people better. Whether it's me not making the effort or not isn't what's important to me here, it's a personal example that seems to lend some truth to the fact that we have certain "friendship slots" that are limited.

Also @Drakow: the number of friendships we have might fall under a normal distribution (or maybe the log of our numbers will). So even though there might be the few of us capable of sustaining 1000 friendships, most of us might be only capable of sustaining one or two hundred. There might even be induced demand in friendship - having some leads you to making more because friends are fun! Then again this might only go on until a biological limit.

I do believe that you have too many friends when you don't have enough time for all of them, as LoudSilence noted. It's a bad thing when you're fighting against your own personality: feeling alienated from people you proclaim to be close to and not understanding why it's occurring which leads to blaming yourself.

 

[Silais]

Yes. In my opinion, you can have too many friends. Too many people who rely on you in many different ways can cause conflict with yourself and your other personal relationships. It simply isn't healthy to have such a large group of friends that you cannot entertain or spend time with all of them without causing conflict. To me, a small, central group of friends is much more rewarding; you are closer to them and have better experiences with them because you can dedicate more time to them. But that's just me.

 

[T The Manager]

Yes. The more friends you have the more people that will or could turn against you if something goes wrong. You can never have too many people to just have a chat to but hanging out doing whatever with just about anybody is what you wanna stay away from. If you tell the wrong person something personal about yourself that you don't want spread and kept secret then they could easily turn around and uncover it to EVERYBODY because they're not your FRIEND. I see a friend as someone you can trust, and they trust you, not just someone you met the other day.

 

[Abnegation]

First of all you need to assume that every person is the same, to completely objectively discuss this theory. Secondly, you need to define what a "friend" is, and how strong that relationship is. So it's extremely difficult to gauge this. The theory is directly relevant to the person, and what they consider to be a friend. From a personal perspective I do believe that you can have too many relationships of any kind, there's eventually going to be a line that you cross, and you cannot maintain all of these relationships to the same degree that they were in their peak. One person could have a thousand friends, no job, no life, no money, no nothing, but they could be popular and well able to maintain these friendships and all that they entail. On the other side of the coin you have a person who is extremely committed to their career, they may have a lot of hobbies and other commitments and have ten friends. One person will always have more time for friends than the other by default.

There is also the question of what "too many" might mean, "too many" implies that it is harmful for the person to have such a number, but I don't believe that there is a case whereby having too many friends to keep up with that it would be directly harmful (I reckon it could be harmful by association, stressful to keep up with these relationships etc.) but I do believe there is a threshold in which there would be a number for any given person that if they went over it, they most likely could not balance their number of friendships and their life duties equally.

 

[BadPokemon]

Quality of friendships is greater than quantity of friendships. If you are friendly with people I guess you are friends with everyone. You still have your core group of friends that you hang out with. You can't have too many friends.