> It was a fun story so I told it to friend & partner/families. All of my women friends first reaction was caution. "what does he want? Be careful with your drink!". My guy friends were more perplexed on why I'd even bother befriending someone almost 50+ year older than me. What's there to be gained.
It's pretty sad and telling that people's first reaction to something as wholesome and positive as making a new friend is suspicion and selfish apathy. Illustrative of the widespread anti-social mental illness that we somehow have managed to normalize.
Go into the Reddit threads of anyone doing something interesting like showcasing their skill. All the top threads will comments like "he's lucky he still has fingers", "hope he washed his hands afterwards", "damn that's ugly", and on and on, on a video where I will see a skillful guy doing something that would be dangerous for me, but is clearly within normal safe boundaries for his skill level. It's just a feedback loop of negativity unless the person is both extremely beautiful and skilled in which case all the comments are about how hot they are. The threshold of quality is ridiculous, the only people who can meet it are genetic lottery winners who also have a makeup and camera team.
This is what we are judging potential friends against. They have to be both perfect and beautiful to get even close to matching what we see everyday on the internet.
In the same way porn can make your real sexual partners feel lacking, these perfect people on reddit/Instagram/TikTok will make any potential real friends seem lacking and worthless. Not worth the effort.
Meanwhile the fact that we are also less than perfect is kept bottled up, we avoid looking at ourselves in the mirror too closely, all of that gets shunted into the subconscious and bubbles back up as depression, lack of self worth, workaholism, addiction, and other mental health issues.
It's pretty sad and telling that people's first reaction to something as wholesome and positive as making a new friend is suspicion and selfish apathy. Illustrative of the widespread anti-social mental illness that we somehow have managed to normalize.