Hello, Fedi! I was recently browsing Polcompball Wiki and now I politically identify as a [meme ideology]ist! I’ve spent this past week meticulously expanding on its theory, adding ideological influences, entire history, personality description, real-world examples, political compass alignments, dozens of paragraphs, relationships and derivative ideologies, as well as describing every alternative versions and their relationships! Not only that, but I’ve also made it egoist! Why? Well, it totally makes sense that it perfectly reflects Max Stirner’s philosophy and literally does not contradict itself! Yes, I know what egoist anarchism is, I saw the memes. And now I am going to create an entire subreddit dedicated to an unironic discussion of theory! We’ll definitely come up with something, I need to validate this ideology to assign a nice label to myself and feel like I’m a part of some movement.

Friendship is a subjective value judgement. Something is “friendship” as long as it fulfills our self-interests. If the friendship becomes abusive, it is suddenly “not friendship” anymore. We only call something “friendship” only when it’s convenient to us, only when the relationship is symbiotic and not parasitic in nature. One can “fake” friendship by engaging in a symbiotic behavior, mimicking empathy, care and protectiveness that friends have that gives them a sense of belonging, solidarity, love and safety without necessarily feeling this way. On the outside the other person won’t really notice the difference (at least until they’ll notice something “off” about you). And that only reinforces the idea that friendship is about social bonds rather than some abstract philosophical BS. And, like any social bond, friendship can be discarded at will if you wish. Friendships are not something important and shouldn’t be treated as such. Neither being alone is something importaint and shouldn’t be treated as such. Friendships certainly have their psychological and material benefits. But only for those who can utilize them properly.