Aristotle defined 3 kinds of friendship in Book 8 of the Nicomachean Ethics:
- friendships of utility
- friendships of pleasure
- friendships based on the good
Perfect friendship is the friendship of those who are good. — Aristotle
What kind of a friendship is a social media friendship?
At first, a social media friend was merely someone whose name, picture or avatar appeared on one’s profile because that someone had approved a friend request. However, many people didn’t like the use of “friend” in this way and so they used “follower” and “follows” instead.
Algorithmically, a friend is just a node 1 deep in the B-Tree of life.
Marketing-wise, a friend is just a potential viral link.
From Aristotle’s perspective, a social media friend can be useful (get you a job), be pleasurable (funny comments), and share in some good (charities and fundraising).
Social media extends a very real world practice of seeing and treating people as things, or as means to an end into the on-line world.
This, however, is the sublime melancholy of our lot that every You must become an It in our world. — from “I and Thou” by Martin Buber
