Bubble Friends
When I moved to Berlin, seven years ago now, I quickly found myself scattered across all these different friend groups. Packaging designers, military guys, electronics store workers, Catholic schoolgirls, internet café people, hairdressers, apprentices—this chaotic mix doing completely different things. Their opinions clashed constantly. We’d argue, laugh, sometimes agree, sometimes not. It was good. Educational. Important.
But most of these connections stayed shallow. Not enough time or energy for anything deeper. Work friends, apprenticeship friends, my girlfriend’s friends, random StudiVZ people—people I sometimes couldn’t even remember how I’d met—but they were there, and that was enough. And everyone brought more people. So many people.
Then I started withdrawing. I’ve always preferred fewer, closer relationships anyway. So gradually they fell away. The packaging designers, the military guys, the students, the electronics store people. It wasn’t a conscious choice, not really. It just happened. One day I wasn’t running into them on the U-Bahn anymore. Facebook stopped showing me their updates. I deleted their numbers. The memories faded. Their parties went on without me.
Writing pulled me into a different Berlin. A bubble of MacBooks and iPhones, afternoon café meetings, creative types at PR agencies and startups, coders and bloggers and social media managers. Now everyone around me talks about the same things: tech, startups, Steve Jobs, brands, followers, WiFi, press trips, programming languages, WordPress. The conversation loops back on itself.
I meet these friends at promotional parties thrown by clothing brands or tech companies or breweries—free everything, but only if you’re on the list. Gradually they started filtering people out, the ones not on those lists. A bubble you’re actively maintaining.
These days there’s no one in my circle who doesn’t exist in this same digital ecosystem. This small universe of media and reach and relevance. When I’ve had sex in recent years, it’s been with agency girls, bloggers, women carrying iPhones like scripture, for whom Twitter mattered more than anything actually happening in the world. The sex was fine, I guess, but first they had to check Instagram.
On quiet afternoons I sit there and wonder if this is actually good for me. For how I think. For who I’m becoming. Does it make sense to only ever hear opinions I already hold? To only see conflicts that already preoccupy me? To only go places I’d naturally go anyway?
I love my friends. I really do. But the longer I stay in this bubble, this comfortable zone of networked people, the more something in me starts screaming for other voices. Perspectives so far from my own they’d almost tear me apart, but inspiring in a way this uniform thing can never be.
But complaining is pointless. I’m doing fine. We’re all doing fine here in this peaceful bubble, even when the EdgeRank drops or WiFi cuts out or torrents stall. Other people have actual problems. I’m sitting here complaining about a reality I created for myself. A reality that’s better than most, whether you measure it subjectively or objectively. And yet sometimes I miss it. That time. When I first got to Berlin.