Episode Transcript
FAWN: [00:00:00] Today we talk about deep friendship? those of you who have been with us all these years, you know we're talking about Nicomachian and friendships, the number one type, number two type, number three type.
It seems like there's a lot of the type of friend. That's the number two, which is
MATT: what do I get?
FAWN: What do I get? Anyway, let's not do that. Stay tuned. Thanks for listening. Here we go.
Welcome back to our Friendly World, everybody.
MATT: Hi. Hello everyone.
FAWN: Hello. So, Matt, do you tell
MATT: Well, I was thinking about yes, indeed. Sometimes we do plan these, uh, and I was thinking
FAWN: about these what, these, what
MATT: these podcasts.
FAWN: Okay.
MATT: And so I was thinking about what, what should we talk about this week? And I, I was like, you know.
Let's take a step back. Let's mellow out and let's talk about stories about friendship, our friendship stories. Let's get a little personal this week. So I started thinking about like cool things that have [00:01:00] happened, or I started thinking about cool stories of friendship and I remembered things like. Well, my buddy Dave came to visit me 'cause I asked him to, I thought about certainly steamy and, and the wonderful things he's done for us.
I've thought I was thinking about and I was thinking about, I was thinking about all this stuff that we had gotten. Right. And it was like,
FAWN: well, you were thinking about it and then you realized, oh no, I'm only thinking about things that they gave me and
MATT: I'm thinking
FAWN: about did for me. Right?
MATT: I'm, am I a crappy friend, right?
Oh my goodness. You know, I'm, take, take, take, take, take.
FAWN: No, but you're not, because as you were telling me this, I was thinking you're so selfless that you don't even realize when you give. Like sometimes I have to tell you, Matt, stop it. These people don't even deserve it. Like if it's a work situation and they're so out to get you, they're like back stabbers.
I'm like, Matt, why are you giving them [00:02:00] so much? Stop and just mind your own business sometimes. Right? Right. You're not the type of person that takes so relax,
MATT: but then thinking about every single story I had to tell, it was all stories about type two friendship. It was all stories about what do I get or what do I give out of this friendship?
And that's certainly, that's one type of friendship that you can have with people, but that's, it's not what we are striving for I think on this show, which is, uh, on this podcast, which is of course going to the Type three friend, which are the friends, you just enjoy being around.
FAWN: Those are the friends that you love regardless, right?
No matter. I'm sorry. Yes. You just love them just because,
MATT: right?
FAWN: And hopefully they love you just because And why do we like that? Or why do we want that? Why do we wanna achieve that? Is because we're really ultimately looking for long lasting True [00:03:00] friendship,
MATT: right?
FAWN: Like true love.
MATT: Yes. But platonic, I'm sorry, I was delving into the type one friendship, which is you're around them because of how they make you feel.
What we wanna strive for is not the type one, not the type two, but the type three where you just love this person and they just love you. And it's unfortunately though, on some level, that doesn't make for a good story, does it? There's not a lot of stories to be told around that.
Just I, you know, we just, we just enjoy each
FAWN: other. Sure, there is. Sure there is. But I, I'm definitely not the right person to, to talk this week about that because I was telling Matt that I feel incredibly, um, I've been feeling this way for a while. I'm not really talking to anyone really. I've been a bit of a recluse, just, um, by myself, very quiet.
It's just my own time to just be quiet. You know, there are waves to go through. [00:04:00] Sometimes you're ready to go out in the world and be totally social. I'm just not there right now. Right,
MATT: totally. I totally get it.
FAWN: Gotta respect that.
MATT: Right.
FAWN: Like, gotta respect that for yourself as, as well as gotta respect that in others and also know that it's not forever.
MATT: Mm-hmm.
FAWN: Like sometimes you just have to go in and not say anything and not, you're just not in a mood to be outgoing. That's totally normal.
MATT: But now then you're walking into the type one friend, aren't you? Where you're you, you wanna be around this person because they're fun to be around.
FAWN: What do you mean?
I don't wanna be around anyone right now.
MATT: Well, no, no, no. What I'm saying though is you don't feel outgoing, like you want to be that type one friend.
FAWN: I don't wanna be any kind of friend just because I've been hurt so much.
MATT: Right.
FAWN: And I'm just so, just so disappointed [00:05:00] that I'm just like, I'm good right now.
I don't Thank you. I need to collect myself.
MATT: Right. And I get that. I totally get that. Whereas for me, I think at this point in time, you know, I'm, I'm in,
FAWN: we've totally switched roles.
MATT: I'm just totally digging being around people, not because, or my friends, and I was about to say quote unquote, but no, my friends at the gas station, you know, it's not about them.
It's not about us having a laugh. It's not about me getting things out of them. It's not about, it's just about community, it's just about being around them, which is interesting. But circling back now to the stories, you know, one of the things I started thinking about was the fact that the type two friend, that the friend who we get stuff from, starts to feel a lot like the algorithm, the ai, all that other fun stuff.
The dopamine hits.
FAWN: Yeah. We were talking this morning about the [00:06:00] ones, you know, when we turn to AI for companionship or to just run some ideas by, or like even if just it, it's a tiny problem. Normally you'd go to a friend mm-hmm.
MATT: To
FAWN: say, Hey, how would you fix this? You, I think we're just, well, I'll speak for myself.
I'm getting to the point where I'm just like, I don't wanna bother anyone. Let me just look it up. And because it's AI and because there's like a conversation that happens back and forth and it knows me, right? So it knows my history, knows things that I totally forgot about. Like it'll say, oh, this is like when you wrote your book about the dandelion.
I'm like, yes, it is.
MATT: I can't believe I remember that.
FAWN: Thank you. Um, so that. Really what's happening, what we need to acknowledge is that's totally not the kind of friend. It's training us to not be [00:07:00] the true friend because it is, it is not a give and take relationship. As much as I'm like, hi chatty, how are you today?
You know? Thank you so much for your, no, it's still just a take situation,
MATT: right? And I wanna say that way. Back in the day, we started seeing something similar long before ai, when we asked people for advice and they said, well Google it. They were literally deferring to an algorithm or to a search engine or to a, to an imagined expert.
FAWN: Yeah, we were in person with people. Again, sorry for repeating ourselves, but like that was a deal breaker. We would ask people that we were becoming friends with, Hey, how do you do this? Because we knew. That they had done it. Yeah. And they were really good at it. Instead of just telling us, and we were there in person, like we were just hanging out, they would say, just Google it.
Like we asked them, how, [00:08:00] how is it traveling with a baby? How do you, how do you travel with a baby? Like what's your routine? Oh, you can just Google that and figure that out on your own. Thanks buddy.
MATT: Right. But that
FAWN: to end of friendship, end of potential friendship
MATT: to me, there's, there's Al, you can, you can see a linear process with a lot of people where you start off with just a type one, which is where you know you're around this person because of how they make you feel.
You know, they're funny, they're effervescent, they're interested in what you have to say. They're curious, they're, and then level two is, these are the things I'm getting from them, which is. You know, the line blurs between one and two. But, they lift me up. They heighten my self-esteem.
They show me cool stuff. They get me concert tickets, whatever it is. And then finally. Into, into three. And if you look at it as a straight line, two is getting subverted at this point. So we need to, we need to pay attention to that. We need to understand that that's happening. We need to feel the fact that, you know, these, [00:09:00] these dopamine hits or these Ooh, that's interesting that we're getting from computers is not,
FAWN: it's not
MATT: the same
FAWN: organic.
Yeah,
MATT: it's not. And it, it, to our animal minds, it feels the same, but it's not.
FAWN: It's really not. Yeah. Yeah. It's scary, right?
MATT: Yes.
FAWN: And I think that, um, there could be a moment where you're feeling great. Yes, you are getting the do dopamine hits and everything. Mm-hmm. But there will come a time when, when you are, when you realize, wow, it's not a person.
And I think the fall from that level of satisfaction that you once had mm-hmm. Could be really. Horrible.
MATT: Right?
FAWN: Like really harsh. So I think I'd like to use this episode today to warn each other of that so we don't step too high up that AI ladder to think, oh, I'm [00:10:00] okay. I don't need to really be around anyone.
I don't need to. Um, uh, burden, quote, unquote burden someone with my thoughts or my questions or what I'm going through. So I'm just gonna ask the computer,
MATT: right?
FAWN: Um,
MATT: where a friend wouldn't see it as a burden.
FAWN: You never know. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't. It's, you have to find the right people.
Right. And you
MATT: have to take the
FAWN: risk. And, and not everyone can handle that at all times. True. Like everyone can handle different things at different points in their lives.
MATT: Mm-hmm.
FAWN: But just to remember that so that we don't have a huge crash.
MATT: Right.
FAWN: You know?
MATT: Right. Yeah, exactly. I was about to say, I would, I would urge patients and caring and understanding and allowing people to express the things that they need to express inside of our personal relationships, because they're not going to be this perfect computer space where I just ask questions to get answers, or I just rant and rave and I can ignore any response from the other side.
'cause [00:11:00] I'm actually starting to see both of those patterns too.
FAWN: It's like smelling. A long time ago I was a photographer for a big corporation, and the CEO always said, um, you know, it was all centered around health and wellbeing and aromatherapy and oils and everything natural. And he always said that, there's so much synthetic things, so many synthetic things out there, so many synthetic products mm-hmm.
That people's noses have become nose blind. That they can't, they don't know the difference. But as soon as the real deal, like something from nature, something pure comes across that they smell, the body always knows and remembers the real thing. And I think that it's okay, I guess, to be, to be around all this synthetic stuff.
Mm-hmm.
FAWN: When you meet the real deal, the [00:12:00] real human, you'll be pleasantly reminded of what it's supposed to feel like.
MATT: So pay attention people. That's what I would, I would say, patience and paying attention.
FAWN: Well, what does patience have to do with it?
MATT: Sometimes I wanna talk about technical garbage that you don't care about.
And you know, sometimes I feel like I just, I just need to vent something or I need to, or I need to, or I need to. And so being patient enough to have an understanding, first of all, that I just need to get something off my chest or I just need to talk about something that was super cool that maybe nobody understands.
FAWN: Well, as long as you lead with that, then we're fine. Right? Like, if you say, Hey, I know you're not gonna understand a word about anything I'm about to say, right. I just wanna express it.
MATT: Mm-hmm.
FAWN: Then I'll be Okay. So then when you're talking, I won't feel so crazy, right? Like, or stupid?
MATT: Yes.
FAWN: Because I don't understand a word that's coming outta your mouth.
MATT: But sometimes I don't [00:13:00] have the wherewithal to say that. And, and the point in time I remember that the most vividly in high school was when I, I met the bass player from Iron Maiden and got his autograph. Mm. Nobody cared. I thought it was the most awesome thing ever. The only people on God's green Earth, or at least at my high school, who cared, were there with me.
Dope.
FAWN: You
MATT: know, so I had this interesting story, but nobody cares.
FAWN: You know what I, uh, what I have found the last few years is like when we used to travel, like if, if in our friend group someone traveled
MATT: mm-hmm.
FAWN: And they came back, the whole group would be sitting, waiting to hear, oh, like at the edge of our seats to hear every detail about your trip.
MATT: Mm-hmm.
FAWN: And I'm noticing that when people come back from a major event. Or something like a trip or something big has happened.
MATT: Mm-hmm.
FAWN: They don't even have the energy to talk about it. Like, it's like ho hum, whatever. Like that. [00:14:00] I don't know. I don't know what's what that is indicative of, but that's something I wanna explore too.
It's something I've been thinking about for years.
MATT: That is interesting.
FAWN: Do you know what I'm saying?
MATT: I could ask Mr. Wizard. He travels all the time.
FAWN: But like they don't have the patience to sit there and tell you about it. I mean, is it because these people like post things online, so it's like, once again, it's a Google thing.
Go look it up online. I posted everything, which is not the same. It's all a lie. Do you know what I'm saying? It
MATT: is
FAWN: like, because I'd like to ask you personal questions, right? Like, tell me what this was like, uh, what. I can't think of any examples, you know? Right. Well, the second, but if I
MATT: take a picture with a French Sean arm with my arm around him and I'm like, this is me with a French Sean arm.
FAWN: No, there's
MATT: a story there.
FAWN: No, no, but like, no, but, but who cares? You know what I'm saying? That's a picture. It's already told the story there has already been told. But other things like how you [00:15:00] felt. Or like, what did you overcome that's not in a photo that you can post? You know,
MATT: I guess
FAWN: you've got a
MATT: point there.
FAWN: I mean, I guess you can write about it, but most people don't unless they're being, uh, questioned by a friend who really cares. Like, tell me everything you smelled and saw and like, how did you feel? How did you overcome that and tell me what happened, what, what synchronicity, like the synchronicities that would happen on trips, we were all waiting to hear about when someone came back,
MATT: right?
FAWN: Like all the magical stuff that happens because when you get into a flow and the world kind of takes care of every little detail, it's magical. It's one of the reasons I loved traveling so much, but no one talks about it. I don't understand. It's one of the, it's like kind of the friendship thing. Why, like, you know, for so many years I, I was taking notes and asking myself what's going on here?
It's the same [00:16:00] with with experiences. People are like not even experiencing, they're not explaining or they're not sharing things that are potentially quite miraculous. It's just kind of being swept under the rug or just ignored. I digress.
MATT: It's a good digression though,
FAWN: is it?
MATT: It's okay.
FAWN: Alright, well, is that it?
MATT: I think so.
FAWN: Okay. We'll talk to you in a few days. Everybody have a lovely, every day
MATT: be well.
