No Man Is an Island

Friendship in the age of content creation and the act of observing the Self

Growing up in New York, one becomes intimately familiar with exodus patterns.

They often coincide with major life events, and I’ve lived through three: the mid-twenties quarterlife crisis (people go to grad school/law school/med school or simply quit the city after giving it 1-2 years), the late twenties egress into Formal Adulthood (people get married or move home or get new jobs), and the slightly smug early thirties retreat (a second wave of weddings, the first wave of babies, decamping to the suburbs, officially giving up on what brought them to New York in the first place).

When it comes to those who grew up in the city and subsequently leave, I’ve found that they either flee the city as soon as they can afford to or find themselves priced out in their late twenties/early thirties. By this point, I’ve watched dozens of people leave.

I moved to Brooklyn in January of 2020— the greatest time in the world to move in with strangers. When the COVID lockdowns began, I hunkered down and watched as the couples around me closed ranks. A friend’s fiancée recently said the lockdowns “weren’t that bad”— a sentiment I would understand if I only went out once a month, spent all my free time with my partner, and cooked every single meal at home. It’s hard to understand deprivation when you feast every night.

When The Cut’s “My Friends Abandoned Me When They Had Kids” piece went mega-viral, my response to it did as well. In my video, I didn’t express any confusion regarding why so many people felt disconnected from their friends on both sides of the aisle: this country is famously hostile to parents. Costs of childcare are rising, this country doesn’t provide federally mandated time off, the nuclear family is prioritized as the ultimate goal, and friendship is devalued in this country.

It’s those last two points I hit on the hardest: this country places couples on a pedestal and treats single people like creatures who can’t be looked at too long for fear that their sadness will stain you. The expectation is that we’ll all find “our person” and all other relationships will pale in comparison. When parents indignantly listed all of their daily responsibilities, I stated that the lack of “village” often starts before the kids are even born, when couples isolate themselves and simply stop seeing friendship as important because they’re spending all their time together. When I said your partner shouldn’t be your best friend, thousands of people rushed in to say they spent all their free time with their partners and how dare I suggest they rekindle some friendships or get a hobby. Usually, parents aren’t the problem: couples are.

As lockdown ended, I found there was still a reticence among my coupled friends to emerge: they had created domestic routines that pacified and soothed them. They didn’t need to go out anymore. They decided they’d “subsist on less¹”.

Here’s where it gets scary: I recently told a friend I didn’t ever want strangers seeing me around pets or children because it’s too vulnerable. Unlike the bloggers of the early aughts, I don’t really believe in turning my life into content. I spent years doing it already. When you’re single and queer, your dating life often becomes a spectator sport, titillating and fascinating in equal measure. Many gay men rush to make the joke first, as if pointing to their wounds will make them disappear, but I know better. I was a jester in my own life for years before I decided to take myself seriously.

Before I took myself seriously, I partied. A lot. For a long time, the people I was most comfortable with came in two flavors: rigid and controlled or deeply unwell. For years, my superpower was finding the most unstable girl at a party and befriending her, guaranteeing my night would be both memorable and chaotic. I can’t count how many nights I spent watching girls and gays scream at their dates and partners, throwing drinks, running into the night like banshees, and getting tossed out of bars on the Lower East Side. I simply could not emotionally engage with well adjusted people. I delicately constructed my personality to be that of a delightful party guest, excelling at small talk, anecdotes, and big reactions.

I hadn’t yet realized that the jester’s curse meant I also couldn’t emotionally engage with myself. In sociological terms, I was all front stage. Everything was outward facing. I briefly had a thing for standup comedians (I know) and a therapist friend pointed out the dichotomy between my inability to be vulnerable with anyone and lusting after people who performed their pain for money. “It’s interesting you choose to go after people who flay themselves on stage for attention” were her words, and I never dated a comedian again.

Before COVID, I poured myself into my friendships. I was always around. The Met, the Mets, Broadway, brunch, Prospect Park, Central Park, you name it, I was there (It’s also easy to have a huge number of friends in your twenties because people haven’t left yet). For years, I was game. When I look back, I’m struck by how much time I had. How did I have time to see people every night? How did I go out every weekend? I wanted to be the bestest friend in the entire world and therefore couldn’t refuse an invitation: my presence was proof of my devotion. I have a very small family, so I always knew I would need deep friendships to compensate.

2022 began. Some friends continued their retreat from public life, some left the city post vaccine, I made more friends. Looking back, I can now see joining TikTok was a bid for community: I grew up online, I've been on every iteration of every social platform, but the allure of a community for readers really appealed to me.

I had been picking away at a novel for a year, but I never considered myself a writer. Not really. I felt I was a consumer and a curator: I always knew what was in the zeitgeist, what was good, what people were furious about or loving. I chose not to pursue writing as a career in college after the economy collapsed the first time.

This isn’t a “TikTok changed my life” essay (although it did). I was thinking specifically about the natural gravities of our lives and how my decision to talk about books online radically transformed my days. For a long time, it felt like everyone I knew was on the same general track, and then we turned thirty and everything was different.

A few years ago, I would spend hours feeling badly about myself because I didn’t have the traditional markers of adulthood. No spouse, no house, no kid. Even some queer friends (who are expected to walk a slightly different path) have settled down. Some even fled to the suburbs. I once went on a date with a guy who bought a house on his own. A house! Now I’m meeting people who have dedicated their lives to art: comedy, performing, writing, creating. I think balance is what was missing. I don’t begrudge anyone their choices, but I needed to know there was another path.

Reorienting my life towards the pursuit of art has been interesting, but ultimately rewarding. I’m reading less, but I write almost every day. When I’m not working on the newsletter, I’m writing my novel or (god forbid) posting. And it’s helped. The act of excavating is an act. I don’t have as much time as I did six years ago because I’m doing so much more. It was easy for that shining, smiling version of me to show up to everything because truthfully, I didn’t have a lot going on. And I promise I won’t be Matt Rife, carrying around a chip on my shoulder because TikTok gave me everything I have. I’m grateful the app opened a door that was shuttered for too long and that I can write, create, share, gossip, and talk about books with people who care.

I was talking to a friend and wondered why so many of my friendships shifted in the last few years: when I went to blame everyone else, I realized I was different too. I have less to give— there’s no question about that— but I feel more grounded. Do I miss the version of me that would haunt Continental, doing shots and crying in public? Sometimes. But I know that that person wouldn’t have been able to do any of the things I do now. I love my friends, and I’m excited for the next stages of their lives. I’m also excited for the next stage of my life, a sentiment I wouldn’t have been able to fathom a few short years ago.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to say how I feel without fear of punishment or retribution (thank you, Catholicism). I can intellectualize and therapy-speak with the best of them. I can talk about addiction and codependency, about seeking validation by orbiting people like a rogue moon. Maybe writing this is another form of intellectualizing, analyzing my complicated feelings about content creation and writing and friendship by putting them here. Writing about the Self is like staring in the mirror— distorting and jarring. To observe a thing is to change it, as they say. Perhaps the observation, the transformation, and the change is the point.

Book club date (Monsters) next week.

Morality Slogans

• Book folks! My friend Amy Allen Clark of the Book Gang pod published her annual Summer Reading Guide. She read 98 books (!!!) in order to select the best picks, and our taste is eerily similar. It’s available here, and all proceeds champion debut voices, especially women and writers from marginalized communities. Amy is bringing 14 of the authors from the guide onto her pod over the summer! I’ll be picking up Finding Grace (one of the buzziest books of the summer) and Notes on Infinity (one of my most anticipated of the year).

• The Canonization of Patrick Bateman: I’ve talked about incels idolizing evil men before, but this article about the alt-right fitness bros worshiping a character that was meant to be satirical (and insane) was so well done. American Psycho is getting remade, but this remake feels apropos and timely with everything going on. (Vulture)

• The group chats that changed America: Terrifying. Billionaires and tech bros all colluding with politicians in a form of financial and political groupthink. They don’t care what we have to say because they don’t see our opinions: they’re truly in a bubble in every single way. (Semafor)

• A.I. Is Getting More Powerful, but Its Hallucinations Are Getting Worse: I published Deus Ex Machina two weeks ago, right before this came out, and scientists are now saying LLMs are simply making things up between 33%-48% of the time. That’s really, really bad. Especially if people are using them as therapists and friends! (NYT)

• A Grand Experiment in Parenthood and Friendship: Speaking of friendship, these people moved to live next door to their friends and sort of share parental responsibilities: it was fascinating reading about the challenges and annoyances that spring up when you cede control just a little. (The Atlantic)

• The title of this post comes from the saying, of course, but also Ben Howard’s “Black Flies”. I don’t often listen to breakup music by men, but I do love a deeply sad man…

1. Leslie Jamison’s seminal The Empathy Exams, 2014.