It’s just like the old days of the practical blawgosphere, where somebody writes a post on a relatively inconsequential aspect of criminal defense and somebody else quibbles for kicks.  Such fun, and I want in.  Mark Bennett posts about how you never know who your real friends are until you need one, as opposed to the 600 “frends” one has one Facebook, most of whom you barely know and few of whom (if any) would life a finger to help you.

Truth be told, even most criminal defense lawyers don’t have the ethic, though the occupation selects for those who do: sticking with people even when their problems are entirely their dumbass fault is an important part of the job, and those who would do so for love of a friend are naturally willing to do so for a living.

Facebook devalues friendship by calling something that when it isn’t truly: six hundred frends, and if you’re extraordinarily lucky two or three friends.

Mark may have undershot the mark by limiting his point to Facebook.  What about Twitter?  Or any other social media, past or present, where people spend their time “authentically engaging” with people they don’t know while ignoring the real people around them?  These are, of course, “frends” of convenience, and hence not friends at all.

Over at Crime & Federalism , Mike takes up the issue.

Friendship requires elevating the other person – your friends.  When I have money, my friends have money.  It’s really that simple.  Friendship is a sort of voluntary socialism.  Of course there will always be the occasional mooch, but one can get an STD from having sex.  Does this mean you stop having sex  – or that you start being careful?  So, too, it is with friends.

Who are you a friend to?  If you wouldn’t come pick me up at 3 a.m. when my car broke down, you’re not my friend.  Why waste time and energy pretending we’re friends?  We’re not, and that’s cool, and friendship is so great that you should devote your time to someone who is actually a friend.

From this, Mike posits that our “friendship” issues stem not from who is a friend to us, but rather, to whom we’re friends.

We are not what we say or think, but are what we do.  We become what we do.  If we do good things for people, even if we begin as sons of bitches, we change.  This change leads to the Sun Effect : We become the type of person others are draw to.

One need not prove the cause to note the effect.  The person who is a friend to others has friends.

And so if it’s true that, “True friends are few and far between,” there is no mystery.

Friends are hard to find because you are not a friend.

In a vacuum, Mike’s view seems to carry the most theoretical weight, that if we’re good friends to others, they will return the favor.  Granted, it presents a chicken/egg dilemma, but that can be overcome by someone, anyone, starting somewhere by being a good friend and developing the desired effect.  Except, it doesn’t happen that way.

It will likely come as surprise to some readers, particularly those without a sense of humor or a great deal of life experience, that I’m a pretty good friend to others.  Despite my playing the curmudgeon and my refusal to coddle the needy and whiny, I’m usually there for people in need, real friends and even casual acquaintances.  Even those I only know from the internet.  It’s my nature to try to help, regardless of whether the problem is self-induced foolishness or bad luck.  I’m the guy you want standing behind you in a fight.  There are a good many of you out there who I’ve help over the years, and you know who you are. 

And in return, not much.  For some, it’s a matter of narcissism, where you “deserved” help and I did nothing more than gave you what the world owed you.  For others, it’s selfishness, that you are happy to take but disinclined to give. For a few, it’s low self-esteem, where you resented me for helping you (hey, you asked) and became angry with me for your sense of “debt” on your shoulder.  Sometimes it’s a combination of motives and issues, but the net result is the same.  Help someone and make an enemy for it.  Or at least not a friend.

By my highly unscientific calculations, the friend to friend ration is 10:1, with 90% of those you befriend either failing to return the friendship or actively disliking you for having done them a solid.  If you’re looking for a return on investment, being a good friend sucks.  If you help others because that’s just the way you roll, then it doesn’t matter.  You help others without any expectation of friendship in return, and your expectations are met.

But Mark’s post raises a more ominous specter, that those who look for friendship online, and who harbor the bizarre belief [h/t, ironically, @ValentiLaw] that their Facebook friends or Twitter followers are their real, true, honest-to-god buddies, are in for a rude awakening.  A friend on Twitter is a frendship quitter. 

When time comes to post bail, see how many of your followers show up with cash in hand.

It’s long been a truism that a person with two or three good friends is rich indeed.  If anything, the internet may not have enhanced our wealth, but taken from it.  With the time spent online worrying about how to spread our wit about at 140 characters at a time, chances are good that people have neglected their real-life friends for their virtual “frends” and end up with neither.