📘 Part 3: New friends and old friends

This episode's vocabulary

Tried and tested - used many times before and proved to be successful.

Avenue (noun) - a method or way of doing something.

Go-to (adj.)- used to describe the best person, thing, or place for a particular purpose or need.

Tie (verb) - to relate to or connect to.

Force for good - the thing or person being described works for what is right.

Sustain (verb) - to cause or allow something to continue for a period of time.

Social gravity well - keeps people together.

Immaterial (adj.) - not important, or not relating to the subject you are thinking about.

Groupthink (noun) - the process in which bad decisions are made by a group because its members do not want to express opinions, suggest new ideas, etc. that others may disagree with.

Irrelevant (adj.) - not related to what is being discussed or considered and therefore not important.

Clinical (adj.) - you use clinical to describe thought or behaviour which is very logical and does not involve any emotion.

Inexplicable (adj.) - unable to be explained or understood.

Cautious (adj.) - someone who is cautious avoids risks.

Niche (adj.) - interesting to, aimed at, or affecting only a small number of people.

Outright (adj.) - proper.

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Questions and Answers

M: How can people make new friends in your country?

R: Well, most people seem to me online these days, especially in this age of quarantines and lockdowns. There's also the tried and tested method of going out to bars and clubs. Oh, and people share hobbies. And of course, they're always like random encounters that happen. And I and other people are close friends with their former partners, despite things not working out in that regard. So there are many avenues for socializing.

M: What's the best way for people to stay in contact with friends?

R: Well, I suppose social media is sort of the go-to option these days, though I'm not sure this provides the same sort of emotional and social depth as face to face meetings where you do things and go places together. And it's possible for people to just come together to enjoy the company. But in general, there should be like a goal, like going for a walk or having coffee. And this ties everything together.

M: How important is it to stay in contact with old friends?

R: I suppose that depends on what they bring to your life, doesn't it? I mean, if they're a force for good then it's sort of crucial, but some friendships can be quite toxic. So they don't really deserve to be sustained, do they?

M: Let's talk about friendship at different ages. Why do students lose contact with their classmates after they leave school?

R: Well, school is like a sort of social gravity well, that holds people in place and that gives them a common cause. And if it doesn't exist, then they're able to float more freely unless you find something else to sort of anchor the friendship in place. And then there's the pull factors of other places to work, other social circles, etc.

M: Do young people benefit if they have a small number of friends?

R: Oh, if they're good friends, then number is probably immaterial. I suppose one drawback might be a lack of different viewpoints or the existence of groupthink, but those are usually easy issues to address if you're aware of it.

M: Do you agree that friendship is more important to younger people than to older people?

R: I think age is irrelevant to the concept, really. People need each other. Having friends is good for your mental and physical health and being healthy is critical regardless of the stage in life you're at.

M: Let's talk about the future of friendship. What might people lose if they stop meeting friends face to face?

R: Well, from a medical perspective, being around people is good for your immune system, but that's a bit clinical, isn't it? There are some things sort of magical and inexplicable about being around people in person. You can see it in classrooms. How people cooperate and collaborate in real time, and how it improves the general mood of things are going well. If we don't see people face to face, we'd probably use a crucial element of our humanity.

M: Do you agree that people are right to be optimistic about the future impact of social media on friendship?

R: Um, well, if we're cautious in our approach, then yes, social media is a powerful and useful tool, but it's also possible for it to corrode friendships as well as, well, people oversharing or projecting a false image of themselves. There are corrective measures in terms of comments and feedback, but that can be difficult for people to hear. Maybe schools should promote some sort of basic awareness on this issue and help students understand how to deal with it.

M: Do you think it's possible for robots to make very effective friends one day?

R: Well, I think they already do in some places there is an article about sex robots being realistic, sorry, not being, having realistic personalities, for example, although this is for like a really niche group of people and not general consumption. It's an example of the direction that we're going in though, it seems likely they will at least be good companions, if not outright friends.

M: So you think in the future we'll have friends, robots friends?

R: Well, I don't really see why not. If people want to, like you should always be friends with people that you want to be friends with.

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Discussion

M: Thank you, Rory, for your answers.

R: No problem.

M: So, new friends and old friends. This age of quarantines and lockdowns.

R: Yeah. Which is just like saying, well, now we have a quarantine and a lockdown, so we have to adjust to this situation. But instead, you just say in this age of quarantines and lockdowns. All of the problems that brings.

M: Yeah. But we do have the tried and tested method of going to bars.

R: Yes, so if something is tried and tested, and it's usually tried and tested method, then it just means that it's something that people do so often and it works really well.

M: And also, we do have random encounters. And encounter is pretty much like meetings, so random meetings, random encounters. Social media is the go-to option. Go-to.

R: Yeah, so it's like the first thing that people use or it's... Yeah it is, it's the first thing that people use when they want to do something.

M: That's your go-to option.

R: That's not my go-to option.

M: What's your go-to option?

R: Speaking to people in real life.

M: Face to face speaking, yay. Face to face contact. Robots or robot free?

R; Well, robot-free now. But if they get better at interaction then why not include a robot.

M: So would you buy yourself a robot?

R: Well, you think about it like you don't. We don't really buy friends. It sort of poisons the friendship aspect of it, doesn't it? If you've bought a robot as a friend, you force someone to become your friend. And that's not really an element of true friendship, is it?

M: It could be like a new commercial. You can't buy friends, but you can buy our robots.

R: But that's really sad.

M: It is sad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, well. So having coffee ties it all together. Yeah, with friends we need to have something that ties it all together.

R: Yeah. If something is tied together then it just means that it brings everything together.

M: Ties, some friendships can be quite toxic.

R: Yes. That just means they're bad for you. Everybody knows that. Sorry, not everybody knows what you just said. Everybody is aware of friends, certain friends that are not good influences in their lives.

M: Like vampires.

R: Except for me. I have no bad friends. I love all my friends.

M: Oh, because you are so lovely.

R: No, because I got rid of all the toxic ones.

M: Yeah. We can also have toxic relationship, for example. And these toxic friendships shouldn't be sustained. Because we sustain friendship, we kind of maintain friendship.

R: School is like a social gravity well.

M: Oh yeah, well. So, what's a well?

R: A well is, well, it's actually a gravity well is the collocation. A gravity well is something that it's like a place where there's lots of gravity so the things stay in place or they orbit around it. So the Earth has a gravity well that attracts objects towards it, like the moon for example. And a social gravity well keeps people together. It's a metaphor. It's a really complex metaphor, to be honest with you.

M: So when you talk about school, school is like a social gravity well. Gravity will. Wow, OK.

R: And I continue the metaphor by saying, if it doesn't exist, people can float freely. So without the gravity holding them in place or in this case, without the reason to be at the school, people float and that means they go in different directions. Well, float freely means go in different directions.

M: Yeah, when the examiner asks you about the number of friends, you can say, oh, come on, the number is immaterial

R: And that means it's just not important.

M: No, not important. Age is not important. The number of friends isn't important. Quality is important,

R: Scotland Freedom. Band nine.

M: Good.

R: What a coincidence.

M: On this podcast again. OK, groupthink.

R: Oh, yeah, a group groupthink is just when everybody shares the same ideas uncritically. So, for example, if all of your friends think something is a good idea and you think it's a good idea because your friends think it's a good idea and no one questions it, this is an example of groupthink. It's not a good thing.

M: Groupthink. Yeah, when we talk about losing touch with people and not talking to them face to face, we can say that it's not good for your immune system. However, it's a bit clinical. So we just go a bit clinical and medical.

R: Yeah. So when you say something is a bit clinical, it means that you described something for medical reasons that you really should describe for other reasons. So like friendship is valuable because it's like good for your soul. for example. I think most people would say that, most people would not say friendship is good for your health. So it's good to be friends with people. Mm hmm. So, yeah, no, it's you shouldn't go to the medical thing first.

M: Yeah, it's good for your soul. Why are you friends with him? Well, it's good for my immune system.

R: That makes your friends sound like, really dirty. Like being with you is good for my immune system because they're filled with disease.

M: You are keeping me healthy.

R: Thank you for keeping me healthy by being filthy.

M: All right. Corrode friendships.

R: Yeah. That's the opposite of healthy. If your friendship gets corroded, it means it starts to fall apart.

M: Wow. So like corroded friendships, toxic friendships.

R: Strong friendships, lifelong friendships.

M: With old friends. OK. When you talked about robots, you mentioned robots could outright friends.

R: They could be outright friends. Outright just means like 100 percent friends, like proper friends. Real friends.

M: Right. Right. So it's an adjective, yeah. Like outright friends.

R: Yeah. You can say like something is an outright lie. It just means like it's 100 percent a lie. There's no questioning this at all. If you're outright friends then you're 100 percent friends. No questions. No questioning it.

M: Yeah. Can you imagine us like in, I don't know, 30 years and robots along us. Hello Bobby.

R: I'll be dead by then.

M: In thirty years? Oh, God, yeah. It's a long time. All right, now we are gone all depressed how old we are.

R: But it's even more depressing because it's the end of the podcast.

M: Oh, it's the end of this episode, but not the end of the podcast. OK, we've just started. Right, Rory? Yep. Yep. Yeah. Now you have some synonyms and precise words, especially a social gravity well, immaterial and stuff like that. Don't get clinical with your friends.

R: Make sure you have a deep friendship, lifelong friendship. Bye!

M: Bye!

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