The New York Times recently explored “the vexing problem of the ‘medium friend’”: people who aren’t your ride or die, but more than mere acquaintances. How much of each other’s bandwidth should you take up? Is there an imbalance in how you perceive your friendship?
I am less interested in the problem than the expression (and the man in the article who, mind-bogglingly, ranks his friends in a spreadsheet). We are increasingly attuned to the importance of friendships for our wellbeing and becoming more thoughtful about how we make and maintain them. Perhaps it is time to try labelling friends, like plastic jars in tidy people’s pantries on Instagram?
