None of my post was sarcasm, I genuinely mean what I said: everybody is moving online. The nature of social life is changing. What people want from friends is changing. Some of us are better adapted to that than others. You are doing what is the new normal, the rest of us will need to learn to change our… Read more

I don’t think they were trying to be sarcastic toward you. It sounded (to me anyway) more like they were lamenting the loss of the social norms of a different time and saddened that this way of online communicating is more dominant now.

So if a friend is trying to be a friend and is being passed over for communication with a crowd of online strangers who throw out meaningless one-line “be strong, we’re with you !!!!” platitudes, does that friend have any remaining responsibility? The friend who was actually trying to, in your words, DO THE WORK? If… Read more

You just could have left it where you did a couple hours ago, but now I’m wondering what kind of ruckus you’d have mucked up when they first proposed the wheelchair ramp.

I, too, am bewildered by this. *shrugs*

It's very weird to me how many people are offended by you thinking your BFF should share major life events with you. It's not like you're upset she failed to tell you she stopped by Starbucks on her way to work. 

Isn’t that what she’s trying to do? Expecting a friend to communicate with you directly rather than as one of 1,000 receiving the same blast is hardly ableist.

Please, tell me more about severe psychotic episodes. I’m dying to hear it.

One of my siblings only tells me life updates via facebook, despite the fact that I don’t use that platform regularly. So I got to find out I was gonna have a new niece/nephew a week after their acquaintances and old high school friends and such learned. Even better, they were miffed it took me so long to say anything… Read more

“My issue stems from the fact that almost all of Jen’s social contact now comes from Twitter. If I send her a text, she may not reply for three days, but if I reply to one of her tweets, she answers almost instantly. When we do see each other in person, she’s on her phone and tweets multiple times.” Read more

There’s a real difference between “live up to a lifestyle” and “not give anything back in a friendship”

There are a lot of people who accuse others of abandoning them in hard times without realizing that what happened was that they completely withdrew and stopped sharing info or emotions during that time. Most of the time the alleged abandoner only left because they already felt abandoned by the other person. And that’s… Read more

Ha, yes. I’ve met a few people who are just totally available all the time and very demanding in terms of time from the moment you meet, and don’t seem to have many friends from whatever they were doing before. Read more

It’s a pandemic, we’re all drowning, and your friend has mental issues to boot. Also, the little in person things people normally do to keep friendships active and close are just impossible right now. Normally I’m big on “yeah you can ask stuff of your mentally ill friends,” but right now maybe don’t. Read more

I’d agree with you if she’d ever told me about the retreats, or that she knew these people, or shared any feelings about them. I was on the phone with her and she said she had to get off the phone because she was in a cabin with 3 superstars in our field, planning her next six months of projects. First I’d ever heard… Read more

The letter writer sounded pretty compassionate to me in that she’s struggling with how to handle this. Lots of people would have just ditched Jen.

I’m guessing Jen might be slightly addicted to the “not real but an incredible simulation” feeling Twitter gives. It’s like turning your life into a movie with your selected narration: you’re the director, the star, the editor—it makes it easy to frame and give context to things like ill health, accidents, moods. Very… Read more

There’s something about a keyboard and internet connection that make people do weird stuff online that they’d never do in person. Read more

My antennae start twitching every time I meet a person that decides I’m their new best friend. These people inevitably have new best friends every year or so, and don’t keep up with the old, because they burn out the relationships so quickly. 

I have such mixed feelings about this, dating back to the early 2000s when everyone was blogging. I would get together with a dear friend and ask how she was, and she’d say, “Didn’t you read my blog?” No. My time away from you is my time. Just because you wrote a thing doesn’t mean I need to read that thing in order… Read more