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Whew, and another one bites the dust. Imagine thinking you found a soulmate in a friend. Someone cut from the same cloth. Someone who just gets you, supports you. Someone to hang out with, someone to laugh with, someone to cry with, until you realize that maybe you weren’t friends at all. The phone rang more when you were available for brain-picking than to casually hang out and bond over shared interests. Not to your surprise, you were a resource, a dot connector.
Someone who boosted their social capital so they could enter the rooms and get the sign-off for being ‘cool people’. Someone who helped build their network by introducing them to everyone in yours, because that’s what friends are for. But to them, you were never a friend — you were a casualty on the climb to the social media hall of fame. Sometimes the friendships we think we’ve been building look a lot more like mentorship, and everyone’s in a race to get to the top.
becoming a content creator or influencer is the new celebrity
During a recent convo, I aired out my grievances on the shift of NYC culture, the creator economy, and gatekeeping.“It feels hard to make friends in New York because everyone here wants to be famous”. In agreement, they followed up, “New York is the new LA”. I recognized the shift when I went to social gatherings and dreaded the next question that typically followed after introducing myself: “So what do you do?” Your existence was no longer based on being human; your value was based on how you could be utilized, who you knew, and where you worked.
The Big Apple has always been known not only for its hustle and bustle, but for its authenticity that blooms through every concrete crack and crevice. When we think of NYC culture, we think of the raw, the gritty, and the grimey. We think of the people who’ll brush past you on a morning commute, but are even quicker to help a stranger with a stroller down a flight of stairs in a heartbeat. We think of the melting pot of cultures that make it hot, spicy, and unique, a bubbling cauldron of language, foods, and sauce that make this city one of one.
When you think of LA on the other hand, pictures of the Hollywood sign and stars in the sidewalks may take up pictures in your mind. Red carpets, mansion parties, perfect tits, and the picture-perfect flicks. In LA, you fake it till you make it, from your looks to your friend groups, latching on to anything and anyone who could help you get your next big break. Regardless of where you live, the stakes are the same; people are now using social media as a way to fast-track themselves to fame. It’s like no matter where you turn, everyone wants to be a content creator or an influencer because they’re celebrity adjacent without the requirement of needing a skill, talent, or expertise. All you need to do is look the part or look like you know what you’re doing.
New Yorkers have a running joke that we aren’t impressed by celebrities because we are the celebrities, but things shifted once social media transformed into a marketing platform. The creator economy slowly took over our algorithms, and brands began to pay to play. Long gone are the days of working hard and getting by based on talent and merit. In today’s day and age, you need social currency to gain access to the rooms gatekept behind optics and a 100K follower count.
Between the influx of transplants and the romanticization of Sex and the City, the culture that once kept this city alive is being drowned out by TikTok reviews, gentrification, and a community built on proximity, privilege, and performance. Intimate moments with companions are quelled by aesthetics, from homophilic friend groups to the restaurant with the best backdrop to keep your feed fed. If the evening isn’t ending in a content moment, your chances of hanging out are slim to none. Here, some people become your friends not for the comfort of community but out of convenience to climb the social ladder. Nowadays, it’s f*ck friendship and f*ck you, pay me.
community is no longer based on connection — it’s built on convenience and commoditization
It was 2016 when the girlboss era hit, and everyone was bitten by the entrepreneur bug. We went from flooding the timeline with filtered photos of yesterday’s matcha latte to curated photoshoots and posting “content”, a word that would be responsible for shaping the social media landscape we know today. Stories, words, art, and expertise were umbrellaed into the digital ecosystems — interwoven into a web of lead funnels and recycled ChatGPT.pdf freebies. Way back when you couldn’t pay for a blue check; you earned it to validate your influence based on who you were IRL and URL. Your next big break was banked on who you knew and access to the right rooms. Everybody wanted a seat at the table and a slice of the entrepreneurial pie that granted you fame, fortune, and a loyal band of followers.
Feeds flushed in millennial pink and women’s empowerment brunches hosted by reformed mean girls selling a dollar and a dream. The promise of being a girlboss — the glitz, the glam, the brand partnerships, the stages, and the popularity felt out of reach for some, but to others was accessible through the power of community. A name on the list that could get you into the party, an introduction to the influencer who was your online big sis, or the connection to get access to high-paying clients so you could finally say goodbye to your 9-5.
To have community, you need to be an active community member, which sometimes requires sacrifice. Showing up even when you don’t feel like it or even giving when you don’t have much left to give. Community can be fulfilling once you’ve found your your tribe. On the flipside, it can sometimes be extractive of your time, energy, and resources if you haven’t drawn a solid line between your empathy and your mental health. But nowadays there’s a price of entry, usually accompanied by a panel of speakers reciting adage advice like “You can do it” in between cold waffles and mimosas.
We went from casual hangouts, chilling in the living room, to scheduled co-working dates and content days. If it didn’t make dollars, then it didn’t make sense to be associated with someone who couldn’t help you make your next best move. Friendships became strategically curated, and networking events turned into the club, a playground to collect numbers to see who’d let you hit first.
And those on the receiving end? Staying on the phone for hours listening to their ideas. Clocking in after hours to consult on their latest brand campaign. Making an introduction to the right people in the right spaces. Adding them as a +1 to accompany you into the rooms they couldn’t get into. All because that’s what “friends” do — we lift each other up as we climb.
People stopped forming community for connection, and started forming community for convenience and commoditization. Before, it was easy to identify opportunists and use discernment to move accordingly. Today, some will go to the extent of faking friendships to kickstart their social climb to the top. Your value is determined by what you do, who you know, and how you can potentially be of use to elevate their career or expand their social circle.
But what they failed to mention is that their friendship is conditional. You’re a “friend” as long as you’re useful. Pouring into yourself takes away from the time you could spend pouring into them, and why would they want that? Of course, we’re here to be of service in our own special ways, but it’s important to have relationships that are reciprocally yoked. You can’t always be the only one pouring into your connections, or else you’d have to go great lengths to pour back into you.
I miss the days when you could bond with strangers over shared passions and not your mutual followers. When people invested in who you were and not what you did before deciding to invest in building a relationship, let alone continuing the conversation. Social climbing is at an all-time high, and the need for human connection is at an all-time low because so many people are operating in survival mode to secure the bag, even at the expense of your companionship.
parasocial relationships and the fan-to-frenemy pipeline
Before we dive into the fan-to-frenemy pipeline, let’s break down parasocial relationships and how they impact our connections, or lack thereof. By way of Psychology Today, Parasocial Relationships are defined as “one-sided relationships in which a person develops a strong sense of connection, intimacy, or familiarity with someone they don’t know, most often celebrities or media personalities.” As our timeline progressed, the gap between fans and the famous narrowed, deepening the falsified closeness between one party and the next.
Before social media, we had Wendy Williams serving piping-hot tea from the comfort of our living rooms. Reruns of VH1’s The Fabulous Life and MTV Cribs gave viewers a sliver of the champagne lifestyle celebs lived. E! Fashion Police and People Magazine gave us access to see who was wearing what, while the Enquirer and tabloids dished the rumours before the blogs broke the internet. Traditional media gave us front row seats to the lives of the rich and famous, but the evolution of social media gives us a backstage pass.
