Let's Not Track Our Friendships on Excel Spreadsheets

Here's the article in question! Let's dive in. 
 

Photo via @the2ndfloorguy

Allow me to summarize his post about the concept of friendship return on investment. He explains that he’s crafted scripts that track “context, patterns, interactions, how I feel after talking to someone,” allowing him to quite literally “quantify friendships.” 

He’s listed out the amounts of time that he thinks a friendship takes to build, noting that even after 228 hours of contact, there’s a “failure rate of ~70%.” 

Before we dig into the lambasting of QTs he got here, just think about how you’d feel if a friend did this to you. Would your jaw drop if you discovered they quantified your interactions on a spreadsheet, talked about you using the terms “annual maintenance” and “ongoing cost”? If you discovered that a friend thinks your company will only result in a .35% chance at a lasting friendship, would you leave their texts on read? 
 

Photos via @the2ndfloorguy

In a lot of ways, this dude’s totally right. There have been so many times I’ve met people at parties, talked with them for somewhere between 5 minutes to several hours, maybe added them on Instagram, then never spoken to them again. But I also don’t consider that wasted time, because a lot of y’all are some strange little critters, and you make me think differently about the world. 

One time I was talking with a guy, and he asked as an icebreaker, where us party guests would least like to vacation in the world. I gotta admit, that one stopped me in my tracks, since, as I told him, I usually don’t consider where I’d least like to spend my time. (Then I, and 2 other random partygoers, admitted we don’t really want to visit either Alabama or Antarctica.) Never spoke to him again. Did I net negative ROI on that interaction? 

Sometimes people will insist on playing rounds of “would you rather,” which often makes my skin crawl. One time, a person at a party asked our group, “Would you rather never be able to kiss someone again, or would you rather never use any sauces ever again?” Stunned. Silence. Wow! What a question! We then had a really long discussion about what constituted sauces, and what constituted kissing. I absolutely despise that question so much, because I cannot make up my mind! But now I am thinking about it, and so are you! And I don’t consider it to be a negative ROI. It made me think about how I love both of those things, and I’m glad I can give my wonderful friends a kiss on the cheek, and, perhaps in the same interaction, put some ranch sauce on a delicious buffalo wing. Life is so beautiful!

Finally, what about those occasions where you meet a stranger and just share a few moments? Like when there was a snowstorm last month, the busses were running very badly, pulling up every 45 minutes or so. It was like, 2 degrees outside, biting winds, knee-high snow, slush, everyone bundled to the max. After waiting for ages, a few of the other strangers waiting for the bus with me all huddled together, phones in our gloved hands, talking about alternative routes together. We pointed each other in the right direction, wondered how the trains were running underground, and then yelled “Good luck!” to each other when we departed. I’ll literally never see any of them ever again — couldn’t remember their faces if I tried —  but we shared a cold, specific moment in time together. 
 

And as for actual friendships that you want to build, I mean, people aren't gonna want to hang with “the spreadsheet guy” who plans scheduled friend hangouts or tosses a friendship away carelessly over a few missed text messages. I'm so sorry, but like, you will get a reputation if even one friend finds out about the spreadsheet thing. If you need a Google Sheet to tell you if you're having a good time or not, maybe you need to find other activities to do or other people to hang with. You should just know. 

None of these examples or thoughts would go nicely on a spreadsheet, though. It’s not analytical, is it? And that’s exactly what everyone else thought, too: 

^{Photo via @nic_carter}

^{Photos via @BCheque1}

^{Photo via @notthreadguy}

^{Photo via @blue_clarity}

^{Photo via @DeeZe}

This guy does seem to view the world through a particularly mathematical and statistical lens, so we'll keep that in mind here. He is also the mastermind (rage-baiter??) behind BuffetGPT, for those who get overwhelmed with the amount of buffet choices at weddings. This same month, he claimed he created a demo device that shames people who are smoking in public, by playing audio of a baby coughing, which if true, is a very funny bit. He's showing no signs of running out of ideas for wacky schemes — in another recent post, he claims that a stock portfolio controls his bedroom lights, turning red when his stocks are tanking. Incredible stuff. 

Unlike everyone else, I’m not going to advise the author to change his ways, because clearly he views the world through his own unique lens. Don’t stop, pal, just redirect that energy! 
 

Stop thinking about people this way, and start applying it to everything else you want to accomplish in life. He would run a group-trip planning spreadsheet like the Navy! 
 

I do agree that he probably won’t form many real, lasting connections while he judges every interaction this way. People don’t really like being openly judged for things like friendship interactions, which are supposed to be fun, as opposed to feeling like a performance review. But there are so many billions of people on this Earth that I feel confident that he’ll find his people, one way or another.