One U.S. dollar was at one point worth 758,530,000,000 Zimbabwe dollars, making it the most worthless currency in the world. As of this writing, it is still amongst the most worthless currencies in the world. The word "friend" has become the Zimbabwe dollar of the English language. It happens to all of us. Good friends can turn on you at the drop of a hat, and your enemies can become your closest friends. But the word "friend" itself has been devalued so much that I now will refer to it as the Zimbabwe dollar of the English language. Here are some of the things to blame in the whole devaluation of the word.
1. Social networking
Everybody wanted to friend everybody even since the days of Friendster (the very first social network) all the way up to the current one, Facebook. I'm that way too. I like meeting new people and getting to know them, and reconnecting with older friends. As someone who posts often controversial and downright offensive content mostly for humor purposes, I've had success at making people laugh on a daily basis. Unfortunately, there are a significant amount of people with no sense of humor out there, but who wants to tiptoe around that, right?
Let's take into account the recent political wars on Facebook. In 2008, pretty much everyone was on board for Obama because people were really more against what George W. Bush did instead of what John McCain did (besides, McCain voted with Bush 90+ percent of the time). By 2012, Obama dropped the ball relative to what he promised (to be fair, almost every politician drops the ball relative to what they promised) and Romney rose to the challenge. He lost, but it was closer than I thought it would be; the popular vote was 50% to 48% (my prediction was that a third party candidate would grab 10% of the vote, but that was my idealistic side of myself showing).
The amount of anger and vitriol I saw on my news feed was pretty appalling. This guy probably takes the cake (thanks Clay for posting this link) though. People were defriending each other in massive numbers merely for the reason that someone was voting for Obama or Romney. If a political candidate can destroy your friendship, then what good was it in the first place anyway? (I have yet to defriend anyone, and I've been on Facebook for six years.)
2. Not keeping in touch
Everyone loses touch. We can all agree with that. But when you get back in touch, it should be like you've never even stopped being friends. There are people I haven't seen in almost a decade and I still talk to them as if we never even stopped being friends. On the other hand, you have people you haven't talked to in maybe a month or so and they start ignoring you and acting like they're way too good to respond to anything you say to them. This isn't a complaint; it's something that happens to everyone. I'm on Facebook every day and I talk to as many people as I can, and usually get back to people as quickly as possible. That's called manners, people, and that's sadly one of the lost arts of society right now.
3. "Friend" has a vague definition to begin with
The word "friend" has historically had a vague definition surrounding it. Generally, we think of friends as people we know and share common interests with, but what good is a friendship if you can't poke fun at people? Some of my good friends are people who are on the complete opposite end of the table from me ideologically. The important rule of friendships? Don't be a douche to one another. Easier said than done, but that's essentially it.
Then there's the "frenemy." The perfect example of this is Betty and Veronica from the Archie comic strips. They're pretty much best friends forever when it comes to everything, but when Archie is involved, all hell breaks loose. They don't even have common interests to begin with, or at least that's what the creators decided they should be like. Betty is pretty much some average white suburbia kid, while Veronica was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. It's only because her father made her go to public school that she was forced to actually be friends with people that weren't making the GDP of a sub-Saharan African country on an annual basis.
4. People change
As much as I hate to admit it, my mother is right here. People do change. There were people I absolutely thought would always be douches their entire lives that surprised me when we crossed paths later on in life. Then there were people I always thought would be good people but have turned out to be horrible human beings who only backstab you and use you for God knows what. I sometimes blame myself for expecting too little (or too much) out of others, but we can only speak for ourselves.
I'll admit I've changed in one way: that I give less of a fuck about what others think about me, but I haven't changed in the way that I always tell it as it is. I get a lot people telling me that you can tell the truth without being an asshole, but people are often offended by the truth and you'll still get called an asshole anyway no matter how nicely you put it. I have extremely low tolerance for ignorance, and I call it where I see it, and since we practically embrace being ignorant, that's seen as unpopular, and therefore, gets me hated.
5. Our education system teaches us to be good students, but not good people
When I was growing up, our education system was less shitty than it is right now. Teachers cared about you as a student and as a person, and did it genuinely without any hidden agenda behind their backs. Right around ninth grade, the quality of my teachers significantly deteriorated into a horrid mess. I pointed a finger at our educational system despite going to private school (private schools are outside the majority of public schools' rules). Around then, I realized that although teachers wanted you to succeed as a student, apathetic parents decided that teachers should also double as parents. That was the ultimate downfall of our education system: parents expecting teachers to also be parents because they were too shitty of a parent to teach their children values—including the value of friendship.
At school, teachers are also mediators who settle disputes. But in my experience, they did such a bang up job of it that any and all disputes continued despite trying to get them to act like adults, and to this day, many of the people that were involved in such disputes still aren't adults; instead of getting closer together and working out their issues, they instead choose to push others away as if the other person was less of a human being. I admit, I did a lot of that myself, but I realized that that was no way to act. Most of these people were homeschooled kids; I could talk about how being purely homeschooled makes you into a self-centered, aloof person, but that's not for here.
One of the reasons for this is because we sucked so hard at compromise, and no one would give an inch to each other. Call me condescending, but that was how it worked. Friendships and alliances were often uneasy and shaky instead of firm and standing on solid ground. Your best friend today could be your worst enemy tomorrow. You always had to, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, "speak softly and carry a big stick." This is from a Catholic school perspective, where charity and love your neighbor are supposed to rule supreme (big hint: it doesn't).
In addition, the Bible had become a mockery rather than an example; "love your neighbor" to them now had a laundry list of conditional clauses in it that were never anywhere in the Bible to begin with. Confession had become a joke, as offenses were often repeated ad infinitum; Lent had become the ultimate one-up everyone else event instead of a lesson in self-control and discipline that should be practiced 365 days of the year. I was often told that I was "going to Hell" for pointing out hypocrisy, and I stand by my word 110% to this very day.
The purpose of school is to educate the whole person, which a lot of schools unfortunately fail to do nowadays. I have friends that are teachers now, and I hope for the sake of our children that our schools teach us how to be good people instead of just good students.
Those are probably just a few reasons, but I think we should stop using the word "friend" so liberally to refer to people. I do it myself.
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