What is a friend?

[mcfnord]

stubbs is working on an academic analysis of "friends" within LJ. His work explores what happens when people's definitions of "friend" differ. He prepared a list of different definitions for lj friend

Comments

Associates

[wave]

Well, it all gets back to associations, doesn't it? These are persons with whom you are associated for one or more purposes which can include any of the subtypes you list.

There are also stalkers - persons whose actions rise to the levels deemed criminal in statutes. The curious, the random, the voyeurs who want to watch without being seen.

"Friends" is an accessible term but within LJ it has come to mean something outside of it's traditional meaning. In the beginning, Using "friend" presupposed that the associations would be positive and mutually supportive. Perhaps that was the goal at the inception of LJ.

Several years into the project we have seen examples of non-friendly friending. At this point the word 'friend' is too limited to accurately describe all the types of lj friending.

Then we have to consider the linguistic problems of what the word friend means in non-English languages since there are significant numbers of journals kept in languages other than English. Americans in particular use "friend" to describe associations much more freely than many other cultures.

Food for thought?