Demote Your “Friends”

Some of those in our lives we call friends no longer fit the definition of friendship. It’s time we moved them to a different shelf.

GONGENHUM
9 min readMar 27, 2023
Photo made by the author using Canva Pro

No, I am not going to do detective work about who your “real” friends are. But have you noticed that a percentage of the people who we call friends — or even close friends — are, in fact, acquaintances, or even placebos? Should we go on pretending as if we are surrounded by a group of loving friends who will be there for us in times of need, even when we have found no trace of such behavior in them? Or should we free ourselves from this illusion once and for all?

This self-help (!) post will help you identify patterns that reveal if a person you call your friend is actually worth investing time and effort in. I also write about how to confront our contradictory thoughts into accepting an uncomfortable reality. This acceptance will gradually lead to better friendship decisions.

How to seek new quality friends is subject to another article in the works.

Classical Friendship Definition

Without going deep into elaborate details, most philosophers agree that the nature of friendship has three main themes:

  1. Mutual Caring: A necessary condition that…

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GONGENHUM

The Noise of Time — Music, Culture, Lost Futures, Possible Futures, Degradation, Silver Linings, Vanity, Elegance, And Then Some More Music