Friends – Auxiliary Memory

How Many People Listen to You

by James Wallace Harris, 10/2/25

It wasn’t until I couldn’t talk to my old friend that I became truly puzzled about a recent piece of advice. I lost Connell, someone I’ve known for 58 years, last April. I keep wanting to talk to him, but he’s no longer there to hear me.

My social media algorithms keep sending me various kinds of warnings about dealing with life in my seventies. A recent video told me people would stop listening to me. And, if I were a parent, I shouldn’t be shocked if my children stopped listening to me, too. What did that mean?

At first, I didn’t think that advice applied to me because I don’t have children, and I have lots of friends. I wasn’t even sure what they were talking about. I wondered if it was similar to how some of my older female friends talk about how men no longer look at them. Does becoming old make what we have to say unworthy of hearing?

I’ve always assumed I would be ignored when I got old. I remember when we were young, we’d say, “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.” Now I don’t trust anyone under sixty. Was the advice about that kind of age prejudice? Actually, moving into my seventies makes me distrust everyone of all ages.

The video said people would stop listening to you once you got into your seventies. What do I have to say that people would no longer care to hear? And why was it a warning? Were they talking about loneliness? And who wouldn’t be listening? And does that include me? Will I stop wanting to listen to other people?

Many of my family and friends became quiet as they got older. Did they say less because they no longer cared what other people had to say and stopped listening, too?

I often want to talk to people who have died. They can’t listen anymore. Is my desire to communicate with them revealing why I want people to listen to me? And what do I have to say that will make me feel bad if it’s not heard?

Mostly, we chit-chat in life. We find damn few people to converse with on a deep level. Was that what the warning was about? Was the warning suggesting that meaningful conversations will disappear?

As I get older, I feel I’m withdrawing from the world. Maybe the warning is suggesting that as everyone withdraws, we’ll stop talking to each other?

I remember an acid trip I had back in the sixties. I took a hit that I didn’t know was a four-way hit, and got rather high. I lost my sense of self. I felt every person dwelt in their own island universe. And that real communication wasn’t possible, and the best we could do was like tossing a message in a bottle onto the ocean, hoping someone would find and read it. I sometimes feel that getting older will be like that. Was that the warning?

Do we have a need to be heard that goes unfulfilled as we age?

Maybe someone older can clarify what that warning meant. Leave a comment.

Now that I think about it, I’m not sure how many people do listen to me. Oh sure, I converse with friends all the time. But that’s chit-chat. I have a few friends with whom I believe we resonate on the same wavelength. Was the warning telling me that those people will disappear in my seventies? That is a depressing thought.

I have one last theory. The older I get, the less energy I have to express myself. So I don’t make the effort. Maybe, if we don’t make the effort to send, we stop making the effort to receive.

JWH

How We Lose People as We Get Older

by James Wallace Harris, 7/6/25

I never knew my grandfathers. My father died in 1969. My grandmothers died in the 1970s. My mother died in 2007. All my twelve aunts and uncles have passed on. My sister, born in 1953, is still alive, but both her husbands and one son have died. Only seven of our twenty-four cousins are still alive. My wife, Susan, and I have known each other for forty-eight years, but we have no children.

Susan and I bought her parents’ house after they died. We hosted Christmas and Thanksgiving like her parents had for many years. As our nephews and nieces got married, they wanted to create their own holiday traditions. We stopped hosting holiday dinners. Since then, I seldom see people under sixty. I told one friend, who is 59, that she’s the youngest person I know.

Of the hundreds of people I knew in school, I kept in touch with only one person. He was my oldest friend whom I first met in 1967. I lost contact with him in April. I fear he is dead.

Before I retired, I had a large circle of friends at work. There were at least forty people I kept up with regularly. Twelve years later, I speak with one person every week on the phone, see another person about once a month, and text with a third person several times a year. All my other work friends have faded away. Several have died.

Outside of work, I’ve made many friends. Quite a few have died, but I’m still in contact with several of them, although that group is slowly shrinking. Of a group of six guys I hung out with in the 1970s, only two are still alive. I was born in 1951; only 72.8% of Americans born that year are still alive.

At seventy-three, I’m still quite social, but I realize that is changing. When I was younger, I assumed friends would only disappear when they died. But I’ve learned that many people have just drifted away. They got jobs in other cities, or they moved to a retirement community, or they quit driving, or withdrew from social life due to illness, or they moved away to be near their kids, or we just didn’t stay in touch.

Maintaining friendships requires effort. I thought being retired would give me all the time in the world to do everything I wanted. It hasn’t worked out that way. I have more time, but less energy and vitality. Aging means triaging friendships.

In recent years, I’ve often dreamed about the places I worked and all the people I knew in each job. I’d wake up from these dreams and lie in the dark and try to recall the names of all the people I knew in the job I just dreamed about. In the 1980s, I worked in a library for six years and got to know around twenty people. I’ve kept in touch with just one. But I really liked most of those people. Why didn’t I keep up with them? I know some have died, but what happened to the rest?

Over my life, I’ve had a couple of dozen good friends and hundreds of rewarding acquaintances. My sister once observed that we start out life in a room by ourselves with someone coming in to change our diapers, and we end up in a room by ourselves with someone coming in to change our diapers. She didn’t point out that we get to know hundreds of people in between.

Now that I’m on the downhill side of things, I’m experiencing a dwindling population of people I see regularly. I’m still making friends, but I fear they will only be acquaintances.

I’ve stopped driving at night, which caused me to see people less often, and for some folks, I’ve stopped seeing at all. Covid put a dent in my social circle. So did politics. Several people I once liked became unlikable after politics got so nasty.

People disappear for many reasons besides dying. Some for their reasons, some for mine. I need to make a greater effort to maintain my remaining friendships.

JWH

“Why Are All Your Friends Women?”

by James Wallace Harris, 11/17/22

While my sister was visiting last week we socialized with five of my friends. At one point, Becky asked, “Why are all your friends women?” I answered defensively, “I have male friends too,” but actually not that many. Well, two, if you don’t count several guys I interact with on the internet.

I’m writing this essay because this morning I was reading Flipboard and saw another article about how modern men don’t have friends. That made me think about Becky’s question and wondered if I had more female friends than male friends because guys don’t make many friends with other guys. I thought of bull elephants and male orangutans that spend most of their time alone in the jungle. Is it just natural for males to lead lonely lives?

One reason I don’t see more guys I know is that I don’t like leaving home, and neither do my male friends. My longest-running friendship is with a guy named Connell. We met in March of 1967 when we were in the 10th grade at Coral Gables High School in Miami Florida. We struck up a conversation over science fiction and astronomy. I moved away from Miami in 1970 but have remained friends with Connell ever since. But we’ve both stopped traveling and haven’t seen each other in more than twenty years. However, we do talk on the phone a couple times a week.

I met my other close male friend, Mike, in 1980 at work. He lives in Memphis. Susan and I are friends with Mike and his wife Betsy ever since then. We used to socialize more with them, and even travel together, but both Mike and I have become homebodies, especially after Covid, but also because we’re getting old and our health is in decline. Only my wife Susan still likes to go out or travel. I’m quite impressed with her for that.

I had many more male friends, but they have died, moved away, or I just lost contact with them.

Somehow I’ve been lucky to make several female friends which I’ve known for over twenty years. I see and talk to them all fairly regularly. Counting Susan my wife, and Becky my sister, I think the number of my women friends is eleven. Becky got to meet five of them, not counting Susan. I guess that’s why she asked her question.

Several of my women friends I met through Susan. Susan was and is much more social than I am. She has run around with several social groups over the course of our marriage. For a decade Susan took a job out of town and only came home for the weekends, and sometimes not even that. This forced me into socializing again. I started going to the movies with some of her friends or having them over to watch TV, and they became my friends. Two of my women friends were ones I made at work before I retired. And two were ones I made on my own. Our shared friendships were mainly based on movies, TV shows, books, and liberal politics.

If Susan had never worked out of town, I don’t know if I would have made all those women friends. I guess loneliness is the mother of socializing. I do wonder now that I’m in my seventies and want to socialize even less if my women friends will still want to stay friends. When Covid hit we all stopped going to the movies and eating out, and that put a big dent in what socializing I had left in me. By then Susan was back home and we hunkered down keeping each other company for those social distancing years.

If I had never gotten married I would probably be an old guy like those in all the articles. I think some of my women friends were friends with me because they considered me safe because I was married and unthreatening. I think women also like me because I’m willing to listen, and I have a high tolerance for lady chatter. I know that comment will irk some, but I’ve known a lot of guys who told me they broke up with women because they talked too much.

I would like more male friends. Actually, I would like more friends of any kind who share my interests, but that tends to be old guys. Before I retired I thought I had several male friends at work that I would stay in touch with after retiring. But it didn’t work out that way. Some of those guys were just too busy with their families, or they lived too far away in the suburbs. And a couple of them I just stopped seeing when politics got too polarized. Guys love their hobbies, and unless you’re friends share your hobbies, we seldom make the effort to meet up. Many men are just not that social.

When I was young I joined clubs, like the astronomy club, science fiction club, or computer club, and I made casual friends. But I’m just not a hobby club kind of guy and dropped out of all of them. I might have stayed in them if the internet hadn’t happened. The internet is probably the biggest reason why so many guys don’t have friends today.

And when men are social, the driving force behind it is to get laid. Once I got married I began losing interest in going out, especially to parties. And I have to admit that I made friends with so many women because I was also attracted to them. Nothing happened in that regard, but I believe I enjoy the company of women because I’m programmed to chase after women and to consider them pleasant company. I’ve wondered if I would keep up female friendships if that programming had been turned off.

Unless we have a shared interest I’m not sure guys have a reason to get together. I’m not sure we crave each other’s company. We like to compete with each other, and we like to work together on a project, build something, be on a team, work towards a goal, or fix something together. Women seem to have the ability to just be friends without a purpose. To just hang out. All those lonely guys in the articles seem to be both unlucky in love and without a purpose.

I do have shared interests with all my female friends, but it’s at a smaller percentage than I have with Mike and Connell. Actually, many of my interests and all my hobbies bore my women friends. I wish my female friends had more male-like qualities. Probably all of them would call me sexist if I said why. But then I’m often called sexist by my women friends because I like to make generalizations about males and females.

I do wonder about all the men in these articles who can’t make any friends. Maybe they never leave their apartment. You have to leave the house to make friends. That’s probably why I haven’t made any new friends in the last decade. And I have to wonder why men don’t make more female friends. Guys who are married probably are like me and gave up socializing after getting married. But unmarried guys should be out there socializing – especially if they are under fifty and still want to find a wife. However, I’ve known a lot of guys who told me they don’t like being friends with women, and once they gave up on getting married or getting laid, just gave up on women.

The internet has allowed me to make a lot of online male friends. But that’s because I get to meet people who are interested in my exact interests without leaving home. For example, I like science fiction magazines that were published from 1939-1975. I and two online friends, one from Great Britain and the other from South Africa, created a Facebook group devoted to science fiction short stories and it now has 642 members. Many of them love the same old science fiction magazines that I do. I used to have two friends that loved those magazines that lived in town. One died, and the other moved away. Sometimes it’s hard to find friends with the same exact interest.

JWH

The Impact of the Like Button

PBS Frontline for 2/18/14 aired the documentary Generation Like about how teens are using the Internet to be liked, and how corporations are using this mass movement to their advantage. To be honest, the report claims teens are quite savvy about how they are being manipulated by marketing gurus and feel they are playing the system right back at them. At best it’s a symbiotic relationship. The funny thing is the documentary makers asked many teens to define “selling out” and they couldn’t, yet corporations have a new mantra, “your consumer is your new marketer.” This show is about the need to be liked, the need to sell, and how society is changing when everyone is selling themselves.

I found Generation Like quite amazing, especially as a 62 year old guy who knows damn little about modern teens. The change in teens thriving on the internet is as profound as the baby boomers experienced in the psychedelic sixties. I’m curious how representative this report on teen life is to the average teen, and luckily at the PBS Frontline page provides some statistics at “What Are Teens Doing Online?”

Even though Frontline does a fantastic job of covering the topic, I was left with many questions. Is this melding of marketing to teens wanting to be liked while they struggle to find their identities an American phenomenon, or is it worldwide? What impact does it have for kids who don’t get hundreds of likes, and what does it mean for popular kids with hundreds of likes to know that some kids gets millions of likes? Has popularity ever been so quantified? Is this the start of a hive culture? And can a hive culture work when all the individuals are promoting themselves? Are we at the start of a cultural transformation or a fad that will go away?

Many of the teens talked about their talent, but weren’t specific as to what that was. Others, like the 13 year old Baby Scumbag was quite aware of what got hits, and was expecting to make money. If Hollywood was a driving force for fame in the 20th century, the Internet in the 21st century will be many magnitudes more forceful. And these kids want more than 15 minutes.

I remember the pressure to be liked as a teen, or even to be popular, but it was nothing like this. I was happy to have one or two good friends, and pleased when others knew my name and said hi. From the outside looking in, it appears these teens feel like struggling actors trying to get noticed. How is that changing the nature of friendship? On the other hand, many of the teens profiled, helped each other in real life to create their internet lives, so they are still socializing in the old way.

This documentary is the tiniest tip of the iceberg at exploring the new online world. I barely know how to use Facebook. I have a Twitter account, but I only use it to remember what I’ve read online. And most of the other social media sites this film explored I’m clueless as how to use and what they do. Will adults slowly absorb this Like Culture? I do blog, and I do get Likes, but not many. But then I don’t crave them like the teens in this show. The show ended with this wonderful visual. A young girl is all animated while producing her video for YouTube, but when she turns off the camera, she sighs, deflates, looks very bored, and the film ends with the sound of her fingernails clicking distractedly on the camera. Will being on for the Internet become a kind of social crack, and normal life a kind of lonely withdrawal?

You can watch the entire film here. See I’m doing the same thing as the teens. I’m marketing for PBS, and liking their show.

JWH – 2/19/14