you know that paranoid feeling you get
sometimes that everyone secretly hates
you or finds you annoying and the
year-long relationships you've had with
colleagues friends family it's just a
long con of lies well according to
science you're not wrong a 2016 study by
researchers at mit analyzed friendship
ties in 84 subjects ages 23 to 38 they
were asked to rank how close they were
to each person on a scale of zero to
five zero was i don't know them three
being friend and five being one of my
besties
they found that while 94 of the subjects
expected their feelings to be
reciprocated only 53 of them actually
were now you may think okay anna 84
research subjects that's a small sample
size that does not mean jack about
me about half of my friends no you're
wrong kate murphy from the new york
times reported that these results are
consistent with data from several other
friendship studies of the past decade
comprising more than 92 000 subjects and
this put friendship reciprocity rates at
34 to 53
half of your friends not your friends
why is there such a discrepancy in who
we think our friends are versus who
actually considers themselves one well
one of the computational social science
researchers on the initial mit team alex
pentland suggested that most people
likely operate out of desperation to
maintain a favorable self-image we like
them so they must like us even if we
hate ourselves
ronald sharp professor of english at
vassar college he teaches this a course
on literature of friendship he was
telling the new york times kate murphy
that treating friends like investments
or commodities which social media often
has us doing is anathema to the whole
idea of friendship if you don't
understand what anathema is i googled it
as well because i was like i don't know
what this man is saying and it basically
means you like really dislike something
or fun fact it's a formal curse by a
pope or counsel of the church so i guess
both aren't wrong treating friends like
commodities may indeed be a formal curse
by the pope that nobody likes i formally
curse you
never again will you appear in my selfie
or tink talk you clown chasing oh
says that in many of our friendships we
spend way more time interacting with
each other via social media than
actually hanging out in person which is
probably how this perception gap
actually came about and to be fair sharp
obviously said all this pre-covered
before digital interaction was necessary
to keep our friendships alive and i know
this study sounds awful half of your
friends don't even consider themselves
to be your friends but if it makes you
feel better robin dungar a renowned
british anthropologist did this study
that revealed that while 150 is the
maximum number of social relationships
the average human can maintain with any
degree of stability which seems pretty
high and impressive 150 i couldn't even
fill out my myspace top 8 anyway 150 is
the most you can maintain
but we are only actually able to
maintain five close high quality
friendships at a time anything more than
five he said are more than likely not
high quality friendships so the next
time you're minding your own business
and your anxiety disorder sends you on a
spiral and says that all of your friends
secretly hate you
smile because half of them do
half of them don't give a about you
or consider you to be a friend which
personally i find truly comforting
because i knew it all along
and the pandemic has more than shown me
and probably all of us just exactly who
our tribe is back in the day you know
you'd have so many acquaintance
friendships or people you only saw at
parties and there was this illusion that
we had a lot of close connections but i
think that actually prevented us from
becoming more emotionally intimate with
our people because our attention and our
social circles were so fragmented and
spread apart so thank you science for
not just confirming my worst fears but
assuring me
that i'm exactly where i'm supposed to
be
hated by half of the people i know i'm
anna akana thank you the patrons who
supported today's video and thank you to
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i'm your friend