No doubt you’ve seen the stats and the charts, the average number of friends that people report has undergone an immense decrease since the 90s. I won’t bore you with any ‘sources,’ even without the stats can we not smell the loneliness? Does the very air of our cities not reek of friendless weirdos? As you walk the streets, do you not sense the trepidation in the eyes of passers-by as they see another human and see the shifty-eyed zoomers retreat into the shadows under our nation’s glorious bridges? No? Ok, maybe that’s just me.
Why has this terrible fate befallen us? Well, thanks to the findings of the Sirsfurther Institute for Researching Speculative Stuff (SIRS), we may just have the answer.
Essentially, people become friends when they spend lots of time together, if they spend this time talking, or communicating in some way, they are even more likely to become friends. However, it is not enough merely to cram people into the same room for a few hours a day and wait until they start calling each other ‘buddy.’ If this were so, the SIRS battery-offices would be full of friends, instead they are packed with acquaintances and rivals. No, we are missing an essential ingredient. People need something in common. They don’t necessarily need to agree on this thing, but they need something, anything, that they can both agree is important. Really, this is just so people have something to talk about.
In the earliest times, the SIRS Pre-Historic Understanding department (SIRSPHU) believes that this function was fulfilled by hunting, gathering and the distribution of food. Consider this reconstruction of a caveman’s conversation, proposed by Professor Higglesbottom of the SIRSPHU:
Ug: Say, Bug, did you see that mammoth Fug just killed? Bloody huge!
Bug: Crickey! You’re right! Then again, nothing like that whopper Jug and I took down yesterday, chap was about the size of tree!
Ugina, to Bugina: Oh, these men, all they talk about is the size of their mammoths!
Bugina: They are silly aren’t they? Have you seen the berries Flugina picked this morning? Lovely and red they were
Ugina: Ooh, I bet they’d go well with some of my green sauce.
And so on and so on. Here we can see the development of at least two friendships based around talking about particular things. Note that although these cavemen and women share common interests, they may well disagree on the specifics. For example, astute readers may notice from Ug’s tone that he doesn’t believe a word Bug says about the “Whopper” he took down the other day, in fact he considers him something of a cheat and a cad and wonders why Bugina is so interested in him. Ugina’s mention of her “green sauce” (what we would call gooseberry jam) is also an indication of some conflict with Bugina, Ugina finds Bugina’s sauces far too sweet so she’s mentioning her own in an effort to get one over on her.
As societies have evolved and become more complex, the number of things that one might discuss has grown. Eventually, people decided to invent religion which gave everybody rather a lot to talk about for many millennia. Often, people will point to churches as wonderful places where lots of friends can be made. Here at the SIRS, our Conversational Dynamics department has carried out extensive studies in churches, usually by hiding in a hollowed out section of the altar (although one intrepid researcher, Doctor Gibbles, concealed himself inside a bell for an entire sermon, the advantages of this were unclear). These studies have confirmed what we suspected, people make friends in churches simply because they always have something to talk about. Occasionally the subject of theology comes up, but for the most part people simply discuss the dress sense of their fellow pew sitters or how boring the priest has been. It is worth noting that the SIRS’s Royal charter forbids any of its members from entering one of the Dissenting churches or chapels, so our research is sadly limited to Anglican congregations.
Anyway, now that the research of our institute has been presented, no doubt you have leapt to the conclusion that in order to solve the friendship crisis, we simply need to give people things to talk about. The decline first of the church and then of the monomedia has left people without something to discuss with the person sat next to them on the bus or at the opera. Once, one could simply lean over to the next person and say “So, that Doctor Who fellow really got himself into a bit of a scrape last night, eh?” and be almost guaranteed of making a new friend, one didn’t even have to have seen the episode in question for the most part. Now, alas, these sources of common interest are in decline. Politics is perhaps the last subject that you can really guarantee everybody has some interest in. Alas, one subject cannot bear the weight of all of society’s needs for socialisation! Time was, a chap could lean over and begin a fruitful conversation with the line “Say, that Mister Heath is in a bit of a jam, eh?” because he could be somewhat sure that he and his interlocutor could move onto other topics if they came to disagree on the subject of Mister Heath, now there are no such islands of safety, so the modern conversationalist is forced to risk a full blown fist fight once his attempt to steer the conversation onto football has failed.
The implications of our research are clear. The government must act swiftly to increase the stock of things that people can talk about. Some progress has already been made, the British government has worked hard to give people scandals to discuss, and our friends across the Ocean have contributed much by their efforts to withdraw from Afghanistan. Needless to say, the government has now turned to the SIRS for more advice, we propose the following measures:
A swift war with somewhere or other.
A two hour period in which it is compulsory to watch TV
Some more royal scandals
The reintroduction of bears into some of our larger cities
A large subsidy for pubs
These should give the nation plenty to talk about and lead to a boom in friendships. Measure No. 4 is an especial hobby horse of our Director Mr Bogglesworthy who points out that retrieving someone’s hat from the den of an angry bear is a sure-fire way to start a conversation.
i have a cousin i wish u could meet