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Comment by MattGaiser | Hacker News Reader

Keep in mind that it is "average" and it is about close friends.

Anecdotally, the pandemic was the great cutting of weaker ties. I talk to far fewer people than I did pre-pandemic (and most friends report the same), but I speak to those people more often. I can easily see that ending in a way where some 20% find themselves with nobody.

I would say I have 4 close friends. But some 10 weaker ties disappeared from my life. Did those 10 also double down on close friends? Or did perhaps some of them not have enough close friends to do that?

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Many of my friends live abroad. We started a weekly Zoom meeting during Covid-19 lockdown. Now we have a WhatsApp group too. Does that change the classification from plain friends to close friends?

Oh god flashback, I remember the zoom calls, and people acting like they didn’t know how zoom worked 10 months into it or that the host can mute anyone that doesn’t know how to mute themselves

I opted out of the extended family ones and the social ones

I wonder if they’re still doing that, I’d rather watch paint dry, which I did for a few months in San Francisco

> I'd rather watch paint dry, which I did for a few months in San Francisco

did it dry in the end?

I stopped paying attention and did something entrepreneurial then left

I would agree - usually close friends are limited to people that share the same values and ideas as you. Having more close friends that all think alike would increase rejection of ideas not shared by other close friends. It is harder (but not impossible) to have close friends that have dramatically different lifestyles, ideals, or socioeconomic class.

Weaker ties would include friends that have less in common, and have different ideas. But that fact that they are a friend means that you are aware of their existence and different ideas. In that way, having a broad range of weak friends suggests that you can see things from different perspectives instead of in your own (close) friend bubble.

It's like how people are less likely to know their neighbors now, who can hold different ideas. But you don't have to be close friends with them to have some empathy.

> usually close friends are limited to people that share the same values and ideas as you

That stirkes me as myopic. My closest friends--the ones I trust with all my secrets, with whom have have practically no secrets, the ones I'd hide if it came to that or risk my life to save--are all over the place values and ideas-wise. It's what makes their company fun. It's also what makes their advice useful, because they'll call me out on my bullshit in a way a mirror image of me could not.

If you are far right, I have to keep secrets from you. For safety.

And no, someone actively wanting to limit my freedom and safety because their ideology is that women must be limited cant be trusted. They cant be trusted in calling me on my shit, because what they perceive as shit is my self interest and my core values.

There's a vast difference between "friends who challenge your views in constructive ways" and "people who make you feel unsafe"

I feel like GP was probably not referring to the latter.

Same for "far left", those can't be trusted either.

However, what strikes me as interesting: Do you actually destinguish between right and far right? Because I have a feeling, many people don't. Why do I think that? I recently read on Planet Debian: "Conservatives tend to be criminals". That sentences struck me as the core of the problem. People seem to fail to see the difference between a person with conservative values, and outright "Nazis". There is a clear difference, but some politically active people seem to fail to see that.

Just at the moment: a lot of people who consider themselves merely "right" voted for a candidate who is undeniably "far right". So for the moment I'm not drawing much distinction between "conservative values" and "outright Nazis".

That was not always true and I hope it will not remain true. But speaking at this specific time in history, this fact represents a genuine threat to life and liberty.

From my POV, you are pissed that your people lost, and can't get over it. Remember that democracy is a pendulum. Swinging from side to side is a necessary ingredient of democracy. You can't always win, and, you shouldn't. But I guess you are unable to listen to this simple principle, because you and your people railed yourself up so much that you are unable to calm down. That is weird to me, as I believe that is a skill we all learn when moving from childhood to adulthood. Throwing tantrums isn't very useful.

Did you ask the question to get a real answer?

The difference between right and far right is, in a nutshell, endorsement of insurrection and militarism.

The GOP was a right-wing party. MAGA is bona fide far right. There are plenty of conservatives (or pissed-off idiots) who voted for Trump but aren’t MAGA. There are also lots of folks who believe in MAGA to the core. The latter are far right, probably fascists.

> democracy is a pendulum. Swinging from side to side is a necessary ingredient of democracy

It’s a multidimensional pendulum. There is no natural partisan swing to group dynamics; it’s why parties fail and are remade or replaced, even in two-party systems.

Also, Democrats should embrace Trump’s precedents next cycle. But the results will uglier than before for those on the other side. (To port prior policy goals, you’d cancel student debts by literally shredding the documents, thereby undermining the government’s ability to collect even if it wants to. And you’d pursue environmental policy by dismantling coal power plants and mines. The courts may get mad later. But it wouldn’t be rebuilt.)

Do the multiple elections contested not count any more? MAGA clearly don't endorse insurrection, their basic strategy to control the government is to win lots of votes and come back to try again a few years later if it doesn't work (they're impressively persistent). Which has involved broadening their support base into low-wage minorities in US society and trying to prise the Black and Hispanic votes away from the Democrats, I note. Might be seeing the fruits of that starting to turn up in the 2024 presidential elections. Or might be a fluke and just Trump's charisma, the Republicans are hard to support.

> MAGA clearly don't endorse insurrection

Come on, a lot of people in MAGA outright support J6. That is the dividing line between far right and right.

Yeah but not the riots, the standards in US politics generally demand that people separate mostly peaceful political protesters from smaller numbers of rioters who happen to be involved. The Democrats identified the riots as a major tactical blunder (although realistically I think they badly overplayed their hand, they seemed to spend a lot more time talking about J6 than developing compelling policy positions, and managed to get democracy voted out which is quite impressive - I'm hoping they disband and let someone else contest the next election) and MAGA as a whole seems to agree with them given the lack of any reoccurrences.

If you want to put that the dividing line between right and far-right as militantism for today then that makes sense. But the MAGA movement hasn't been using militant tactics, and they'd be more alt-right than far-right under that standard. They've been pretty consistent at working to win power through increasing their vote share and base of popular support. They've been dumping vast amounts of time, money and effort into it.

For the sake of argument, say that J6 riot was a planned thing. Compare the logistic efforts to get a crowd settled at a major Trump rally to the organisational support that resulted in an insurrection with less than 100 armed people. The oomph just isn't there.

> Do you actually destinguish between right and far right?

Some on the right are far right, some are not. Many people on the right will prefer far right over center and vote accordingly. They just do not like the aesthetic and historical associations.

> Because I have a feeling, many people don't.

That is because right radicalized itself much more then left. And moderate right spend too much time excusing, enabling to and defending far right then by anything else. They loved to pretend far right does not exist, actually, until it turned out they ended up undistinguishable.

> People seem to fail to see the difference between a person with conservative values, and outright "Nazis"

Problem is that "conservative values" is more of an euphemism that sounds good when you want to pretend a group of people have much better motivations then they actually have. That is how it was used for over a decade now. People with conservative values rarely object to far right values, but they straight up hate the center (which they claim to be practically communists).

That is probably a US specific phenomenon, as we in Europe don't have so much dislike towards communism as you guys over there seem to have. However, I could draw the same conclusion as you did regarding left leaning people. People with progressive "values" rarely object to far left values, although they are incapable of having a useful conversation with center people. So.

> If you are far right, I have to keep secrets from you. For safety

Wide gulf between “people that share the same values and ideas as you” and Nazis.

Nazi share values with quite a lot of people. Nazi adjacent worldview is not as rare as we like to pretend it to be.

But I intentionally picked example that makes it clear that shared values are necessary for that trust. You may have differences on the edges, but it wont work without them.

Wide gulf between "far right" and Nazis.

> Wide gulf between "far right" and Nazis

Not really, and I say this with genuine surprise.

The folks who support January 6th are also incredibly quick to support ignoring courts, suspending habeus, concentration camps (sorry, extrajudicial domestic detention explicitly based on probable cause that begins and ends with race, followed by attempted exfiltration from protection from the law), and, like, straight up admitting to revering Nazis [1][2].

Democracy works with left- and right-wing elements because there is a lot of heterogeneity in those sets. That makes compromise possible. Far left and far right groups across history are remarkably similar in their policies, messaging and even colour schemes for reasons I don’t get. (There is autocorrelation due to the heavy lifting homage does in their branding, of course, but why do the far right and left always embrace tariffs and trade wars? Like, going back to the Roman Republic.) This uniformity and quasi-religious zeal basically makes them poisons to democracy.

The moment someone is arguing why their far right position is actually quite different from being Nazi (or far left from its worst elements), you’ve already lost.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2y94xe397o

[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/14/private-chat-among-...

Based on your wording, everything that's right to your position, that you label as "balanced and center" of course, is "far right". I'm probably far right to you, because I have some right-wing views.

It had some meaning maybe 10 years ago but now it's washed out terminology. Keep thinking that you're surrounded by nazis, if it keeps you warm though.

> everything that's right to your position, that you label as "balanced and center" of course, is "far right"

Nope. I have plenty of conservative and right-wing friends. We disagree on a number of social issues, and occasionally, economic ones too.

They don’t support violently overthrowing the U.S. government, or using the military to secure what they can’t at the ballot box, however, and so aren’t far right.

> Keep thinking that you're surrounded by nazis, if it keeps you warm though

Straw man. I don’t personally know anyone who is far right. Out of the folks in the administration, I can only really finger Miller and the DOGE bros as bona fide racists and far right agitators.

How do you label someone "far right" then? Try to describe it without CNN bs like "kids in cages". E.g. why Elon Musk is "far right", in your opinion?

> I have plenty of conservative and right-wing friends.

Lol, I guess the "I'm not antisemite, I have jew friends" blueprint is still popular. We both know that you don't, though.

But it also creates echo chambers, especially when your "inner circle" is big enough to feel like a complete social world

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