Also, "having a friend" and "choosing to be around" certain people are 2 totally different things. There are many ways to be around people including volunteering, playing sports, and especially taking a job. Those people can exert great positive influence on you regardless of whether you become friends with them.

Obviously, there are many people that we're very close friends with, even though we're rarely surrounded by them.

So its generally when you're choosing your friends around some utilitarian metric that you begin tread into sycophantic waters.