One-sided interaction doesn’t make you friends.

You laugh at their jokes. You admire them. Their presence brings you joy. They teach you things, and you learn from them.

BUT.

You rarely even attempt to make them laugh. You couldn’t teach them a thing; if you did, it would be one small lesson for 100 big ones going the other way. They never ask you for advice.

You’re not friends. You are a student and a teacher. A fan and an idol. Child and a parent. You’re not equals.

This can be a mutually beneficial relationship, but you are not friends or lovers. This person could handle thousands, if not millions, of people like you on a social media platform. Maybe that’s how you know them. The secrets they tell to everybody are not secrets. They are not entrusted with you if they’re shared on a public platform or with everyone they know.

Why are they doing this?

It is a personally rewarding experience and feeling to entertain and educate people. Either or or both. A natural human reaction to being an uplifting person is enjoyment or pleasure of it. It’s like ‘biology’ even though it’s psychology. A psychological response to behaviour that helps the whole species.

While it’s OK to love them, it is not helpful to assume they teach you or help you because you are special to them, but rather because humanity is special to them.

They will also eventually stop teaching or entertaining others if too many people take it as personal permission to interfere in their lives as if they were friends or even lovers. To keep them doing what they’re doing, stop taking it as a personal invitation to push your way into their private life, (even if they call you all with a collective term “friends.”)

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