In Kanye West’s recent single, “Real Friends,” he cynically describes all the friends he has lost as he became famous and how he had to learn the true definition of friendship. This, unfortunately, is the anthem for friendship in 2016.
Whether we would like to admit it or not, many of us haven’t been real friends to the people we refer to as our second family and vice versa because we are becoming increasingly self-centered. But how can we not be, with the way pop culture and social media influence us to be materialistic and greedy?
Take, for example, how greatly Instagram influences our generation. We care more about how many likes our friends get on their posts more than we care about the actual friend. All of a sudden, we are competing for social media popularity instead of focusing on making legitimate bonds. It’s scary to witness people dying to be friends with someone because they are Instagram famous. Since when did media fame become a requirement for friendship?
Moreover, music and pop icons often glorify being your own best friend and not trusting others, when we should be striving for neither. The belief that doing things on our own makes us better than those who do it with help influences our perception of friendships. Instead of seeing a friendship as a bond, some of us see it as beneficial, and, if it does not have a material value, it has no value at all.
The problem with young adults, especially college students, is that we are in the most fun part of our lives, so we often get caught up in what’s trendy, and we forget to do important things like maintaining healthy relationships for the future.
There are three type of friends in this world: the genuine friend, the moocher friend and the jealous friend. The saddest part is the genuine friend is the least common nowadays. College students change friends more than they wash their laundry, and then we wonder why we can’t trust anyone.
OK — let’s not jump to conclusions. It is very true that we outgrow people, or, sometimes, bad things happen that cause us to part ways with someone we thought we would be friends with forever. But that’s not the majority of friendships. Whether we would like to admit it or not, we all need assistance, and we should not let the fear of someone being a bad friend discourage us from seeking support from others.
That’s not to say that we should become dependent on people or that all friendships entail some sort of obligation, but that is the beauty of friendship. True friendship is about being able to call that one friend when hard times come. Instead, we have friends like The Plastics in “Mean Girls,” who all secretly hate each other almost as much as they hate themselves, and friends like in “Dawson’s Creek,” who try their hardest to ruin and/or come in between the happiness of other friends.
It’s almost like no one can be genuinely happy for anyone else, and that’s not what friendship is all about. We shouldn’t become friends with people because we hope that, later in the future, we’ll benefit from their success. The truth is, friendship means helping to motivate each other and supporting each other on the journey to success. Whether or not we make it, we should still be there for our friends.
In “Real Friends,” West even talks about how he barely calls his “friends” and that he only sees them on holidays, which is just preaching to the choir. Everything is text this and tweet that, and the longest phone calls we make are to say, “Hey, I’m outside,” as we go to visit our friends for the first time in months.
Not everyone in our generation practices the art of fake friendship; however, it is definitely a growing epidemic, so much so that people are starting to have a hard time trusting others. Some of us can count the number of real friends we have had up until now on one hand and still have fingers left over — that’s disheartening.
This rant may not apply to those of us who think we are real friends, but it is definitely important for all of us to reclaim the meaning of friendship and remain the good friends we are or become the ones we should be. College is hard enough — everyone could use a real friend or two.
