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Comment by bee_rider | Hacker News Reader

I think longer is… possible, at least? The internet has allowed me to keep in touch with friends from elementary school. I’m, unfortunately, approaching 40 more quickly than I’d like, so these are around 30 year friendships.

Although, I’ve also got some college friends that I’d consider close. So that’s more like 15 years. Also online mostly at this point.

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This is an excellent point. I have 10 friends that I went through 15 years of school + University with. So obviously very close friends. We remain in touch via group chat a decade on but only actually see each other once or twice a year. I would still consider them among my closest friends - but the convenience of modern technology has definitely preserved those friendships to a large extent. I imagine if we had to actually phone each other we would feel much less close.

We move a lot more than we used to. Not so long ago you generally didn't need internet to keep in touch because 50 years later your childhood friend would still live 10km away

What makes you consider them close (aside from length of friendship)?

The main things that help me know a friendship is close are: I’m sad when I don’t see them, but not worried that we’re drifting apart.

I dunno. It isn’t well defined I think. We come with built-in accelerators for social interactions, right? It runs some weird proprietary language I guess, the rest of my brain can’t make heads or tails of it.

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