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If you’re trying to be my friend you have to meet some basic criteria: You must be a kind person, be ambitious, be open to personal growth, and I must respect and admire you.
If you think we’re friends, and you don’t meet this criteria, then you’re my fan. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate my fans, but do differentiate them from friends.
I’m certainly not above making new connections – I pride myself on being able to make friends quickly and easily – I just don’t have the capacity to devote time to friends if everyone is my friend.
Friends Vs. Fans
With the advances in transportation, communication and now the popularity of social networking it’s never been easier to keep in touch. Become popular enough, or a social networking whore, and you’ll have no time for anything but entertaining superficial relationships with fans and strangers.
If you’re not popular enough – or don’t have enough exposure to new people – then you’re in danger of settling for friends that don’t meet your own personal criteria. Deep connections with the wrong people can be just as bad as superficial connections with too many right people.
As you can probably already tell a happy medium exists somewhere in the equation. Make no mistake, you don’t want to compromise on the quality of the people that you surround yourself with. What you do want is to have an amount of people in your life that you can devote enough time to in order to maintain deep connections.
Certain friends require more maintenance than others. I have friends that I can call once every couple of months, we catch up and empower each other on our journey, and then go about our separate lives. Then there are friends that I keep up with weekly or even daily.
When things are not totally reciprocal, such as when a person with less connections wants to make friends with a very connected person, a phenomenon known as “fan” happens. One person might respect and admire the other, while the other might not have had the pleasure to find this out about them.
It’s important to realize when you are being a fan. If you’re a fan of too many people, you might not have enough time left over to nurture deep friendships and still get your work done.
The solution is time management (or possibly friend management) and is a two-step process involving honesty and assertiveness. Be clear with people that you cannot devote time to them because you’re working towards a very important goal. At the same time, make it a point to not only devote time to your friends but really be with them and listen.
“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.”
~Walter Winchell.
They say that sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down. The real friends, the ones that aren’t just fans, will come-a-knockin regardless of whether you’re up or down.
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Comments
08.17.09
I've found this to be a very prevalent phenomenon in social media. I don't hold a double standard as far as who my friends and who my "fans" are. However, I respect when someone tells me that they won't add me on facebook because they don't actually know me in real life. It can make for a blurry line, but it's each person's own to walk.
08.17.09
I'm a bit cynical of 'fans' on social networking sites, even here on Brazen Careerist. I wish that becoming someone's fan required a short explanation of why you wanted to be a fan.
I've noticed that people become a 'fan' of me right after I post a comment to one of their blog posts. I wish I knew if they did this because they liked what I said, or just because they are a fan of anyone who commented.
08.17.09
Maybe it's because I'm currently in the headspace of writing about the futility of non-reciprocal "relationships," but I'd be inclined to write off anyone who put up walls or any other barriers to entry simply for the purpose of testing if I was a true enough friend to try to break them out/overcome them.
08.17.09
Or rather, "break them down."
12.18.09
The friend/fan relationship can be a slightly weird one. It's up to you to define what you want out of it and what it means to you. Or what you're able to give. Being the more connected person doesn't mean you aren't getting something from the interaction. No one starts out at the top of the hill and the opportunity to be a mentor can be a fulfilling one.
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