h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What on Earth is getting into me of late? Have I lost the ability to tell real life from online life to the extent that my online and RL personae are inextricably melding like milk and caustic ammonia spilled on the same tabletop? Will my easy-going, friendly, open RL nature start cropping in h2g2 conversations? 'Cos sure as hell, I'm behaving more like FM in RL than CD.

Let me give you an example. I've know a guy for 20-odd years. We were at Uni together and we soon became very close friends because we shared a lot of the same interests and outlook on life. When he 'came out', I was there with a couple of others to support him.

We've since drifted apart: he ended up down in London and discovered money and conspicuous consumption. I discovered family. I still felt we had something in common, though, dspite the fact he hasn't visited me for about 10 years 'because London supplies all the excitement that I need'. All along he's styled himself as a 'theoretical physicist', despite the fact that he didn't pursue physics beyond his first degree and does much the same job as I do: IT project management. With him it's been a hobby more than anything else.

So, out of interest, I sent him a link to my latest EG entry, the one on Alpha, that made Editor's pick. He said he though it was nicely written. We got discussing various issues, and I mentioned my misgivings with a very esoteric area of physics, string theory, that hasn't really seemed to have produced anything tangible in the way of predictions, other than that all universes seem to be possible. I also pointed out that there were other equally worthy pursuits in physics, inside and outside the search for a theory of everything.

He then started and continued to patronise the crap out of me. He'd always tended towards arrogance but he'd had other qualities that tempered that. I didn't see them emerging this time, I reminded him that he was the one with the mediocre degree and I was the one with the PhD. So, I told him to risk some public exposure for a while instead of being the scientific equivalent of a cafe-society intellectual. That if he really regarded himself as being a theoretical physicist, to prove it. Such as writing a h2g2 entry on why String theory is so bloody important it has to swallow up all the brains and funds. But of course, he was 'too busy'.

I doubt very much whether we will speak again because of this, but it's sad to see that a personal trajectory I saw forming twenty-odd years ago has been followed almost down to the millimeter. He has become more and more self-satisfied and is so up himself that he seems to think his own interests are the only truly worth interests worth pursuing.

The core fact, though, is that he left our friendship, which was very close, wither on the vine through neglect and indifference, and I felt myself bnehaving towards him as I do here on occasion, simply because I no longer had any investment in it. I might not lead an exciting metropolitan existence and be pretty antipathetic towards sensation-seeking, but I always thought that the sign of a true friendship was that it didn't need that kind of motor to sustain it. How wrong I was. And how typical of him to point it out.

Sad story. It's always sad to lose a friend. Still, I regard it as one of the consolations of growing older how much less I care what other people think of me. You're not my age yet, but perhaps you should just accept the licence to give out yards. You've earned it, and folks will come to expect it of you, even if they don't (in RL) yet.

Yes, it is pretty unpleasant to lose a friend. Robert Heinlein had the right attitude: 'remember them as they were, then write them off'.

I constantly make new friends, and although only a few survive to become very close or long term friends, as I get older I have no hesitation about culling old ones who've lost their charms. I just need to learn how to do it tactfully and gracefully and try to hurt the other person as little as possible, rather than as much.

I recently cut loose a friend I've had for 13 years - but we'd really only become friends because I was friends with her partner, then we had babies within 3 months of each other. There was a slight altercation about delivery of some furniture I was buying off her, and finally I got fed up with her childish tactics. She tried to blackmail me into taking delivery before time we'd agreed when I said I wasn't ready (because I'd gone out thinking I had all day to sort the room out, and she knew that! If she's said the earlier time at an earlier time I wouldn't have gone out! Anyhoo...) she got all annoyed and started sending stroppy messages about how awkward I'd made things by not being flexible. As far as I'm concerned friends don't blackmail each other, so I sent a message saying I couldn't manage to fit the furniture in the space I wanted after all and so would have to leave it. She didn't reply and we haven't spoken since.

I miss her eldest child - he was 13 earlier this month and it still plays on my mind that I missed him turning teenager, but I've finally given up trying to deal with an adult who constantly 'isn't speaking to' various longstanding friends and family members because they've disagreed with something she's said.

So you're not the only one, but at least this time I've just kept quiet about it, and if she wants to tell people she 'isn't speaking to Mina because she messed us about over furniture' that's fine by me.

I must admit I've become a lot more sensitive recently to asymmetry in friendships, where you wake up to the fact that somebody who you thought was your friend has been treating you like shite for the past decade or so.

One guy in particular, he had his problems in the past with depression and his relationship. They got so bad that he used to lean on me as a crutch. He even turned up at my past workplace a couple of times in a state of despair, and I had to drop everything to deal with him. Then, when he split with his partner he more or less monopolised my time.

he now lives by himself, and used to rent out his spare room to lodgers. He doesn't any more. Last year I and the other half were having our own problems, push nearly came to shove and I was looking for somewhere to live in case we split. I knew he had a spare room, so I called him to tell him what was going on and even offered him rent. Two days later I got a text message: 'I can't offer you the room due to a variety of reasons, but I'm sure you'll find somewhere.' He just couldn't be bothered.

So I sat back and waited my time. They discovered a benign tumour on his throat, and he needed a lift to the hospital. He rang twice. So I sent him a text message: 'I can't offer you a lift due to a variety of reasons, but I'm sure you'll find someone.' He has never spoken to me since.

Perhaps I'm being unreasonable when I say I look for loyalty, honesty and consistency in my friendships now. Perhaps my standards are too high. I don't know.

Funny things friends - I signed up to friends re-united because I'd lost the addrss of a mate of mine - after I'd sent him an e-mail I browsed through the rest - out of 70+ of my school mates there wasn't one I wanted to contact.

Ditto. I hated school. I still hate it.

Hi hope you don't mind me posting here. It's another of those ocassions where I have to agree with your comment FM about :-

"Perhaps I'm being unreasonable when I say I look for loyalty, honesty and consistency in my friendships now".

I've lived my whole life on that very set of principles and frankly see no other way of doing so. I offer help, solace and advice to anyone without fear or favour nor for reward but if anyone abuses that then I am not nice to know and though I may not say or do anything at the time, I do "sort it" in my own way, in my own time and usually to the detriment of whoever broke that trust. I'd much rather have a heated row and agree to disagree in the end than live a lie. If 2 people can't do that then frankly you're not even an aquaintence let alone a friend in my opinion.

I think as you get older you become more aware of just who treats who as a real friend or just uses you for what they can get from you.

Just my worth.

No, I don't mind you posting here at all. I do think, though, that there comes a point when one can become forthright to the point of being callous. I try to avoid that in RL.

I haven't tried to avoid that on h2g2 because I find the need not to have to abide by the norms of everyday diplomacy quite liberating. I never set out to give offence gratuitously, all the same. Some people get an inordinate amount of please from putting down others. I'm not one of them.

That should have read:

" Some people get an inordinate amount of pleasURe "

My mother described herself as 'blunt speaking' 'I call a spade a spade' which she claimed made her enemies. However there is no need to tell someone their new bag is now on offer, or that they have a personal habit you find revolting.

Blunt speaking can be an excuse for insulting people under the guise of honesty, then waving your innocent placard about.

And there are some things over which a disagreement can mean an end to the friendship because the two sides are totally incompatible.

One of the aspects of the exchange that triggered the breakdown of the relationship mentioned at the outset of this thread was the fact that my ex-friend was making increasingly patronising comments peppered with lots of smileys. I asked him not to use them but he carried on.

I use them very infrequently myself, and have asked people NOT to use them at my PS for two very good reasons. The first is that conversations around here can get hijacked by twxts who seem to solely exchange trite and vacuous comments bracketed with hundreds of the bloody things. The second reason is that they are often used hypocritically: there's only one thing worse than somebody telling you that you're crap/full of shite/stupid, and that's somebody doing it with a bloody great big smirk plastered over their face.

If you're going to insult someone, at least give them enough respect not to do it lightly.

Oh, and another reason I hate them being used in that context; when you get pissed off with soembody's tone, then they can say 'oh, you take me too seriously'. It's like telling someone to 'lighten up', which in when said to me, greatly increases the chance of the person being pinned up against the wall by their lapels.

"Lighten up" when used to mean "You misunderstood my intent" is exactly the ploy used by a person caught just before they rob you.

"I wasn't going to at all." Accompanied by much show of hurt feelings. Yeah right.

I generally find that the best response to "lighten up" is a knee in the balls followed by "laugh that off, then."

I actually saw a Great Bustard once. It was in a field near some windmills. At least my Mrs said it was a Great Bustard. I was driving at the time so I didn't get a good look at it. I couldn't sop because there was an idiot in a BMW right up my chuff box.

An idiot in a BMW? Surely not!

FM (Skoda driver)

I saw my first kingfisher last weekend on a Sunday lunchtime walk down by the Trent & Mersey Canal. Brilliant things.

String theory does some really weird things to perfectly normal scientists.

It's taking on the trappings of a new religion, to be honest. The reasoning within the parameters of the discipline may be flawlessly self-consistent but reality, as we understand it, doesn't appear to have intruded upon that reasoning.