In an inter-connected world, finding friends has never been more easy, and yet these relationships have never been more fragile. The increased pool of potential friend relations, enabled by meetup apps and social media, makes relations more ephemeral and fragile.
Before social media, finding friends required meeting in third places (bars, barber shops, parks, private clubs, hotel lounges, sports leagues, coffee shops, even laundromats). Once these relations were established, it required some effort to keep in touch. And so the epistolary form was the norm. Postcards. Telegrams. Hand-drawn letters. Street telephones fed with silver coins.
The addictive nature of algorithms (and screens in general) has down-graded us all. We have been domesticated to a fast/expeditious lifestyle, and so we have grown impatient and restless. We are now starved by dopamine hits. In this social milieu, friendships now break at the minimal friction.
It is in this context that slow friendships, the type that require effort and patience and forgiveness, are ever more valuable. Cherish those dearly.