The other night, in a moment of either deep cultural insight or total defeat, I found myself watching King of Queens while eating a bowl of cereal that technically expired in April. The show is not bad. I wouldn’t call it great either, but it’s comfortably mediocre in the way that most American lives seem to be designed: familiar, beige, and padded like a La-Z-Boy.
That’s what makes it perfect, actually. It’s the television equivalent of one of those friends who never expects much from you, and in return, you don’t expect much from them either. But then a line slipped out of Kevin James’ mouth and hit me like an empty Pringles can to the forehead.
He and his on-screen wife were trying to find other married couples to befriend. The problem? Everyone had kids, which is, I’m told, a rather consuming hobby. So finally, in frustration, he said, “Ahh friends just keep you away from TV anyway.”
I paused the show. Literally. I paused it and sat there for a moment, spoon suspended mid-air like some sort of dairy-coated oracle, and thought, My God. That’s it. That’s America.
We’ve given up on people.
We used to build relationships in church basements over bad coffee. We had bowling leagues and block parties and dinner guests who brought Jell-O salads with embedded mysteries. Now we have The Office reruns and an ever-growing intimacy with the Hulu “Are you still watching?” prompt, which somehow feels both judgmental and enabling.
In other countries, ones where they eat meals over three hours and argue about politics with their hands instead of firearms, people are the entertainment. Friends are the TV. The social scene is the show. You don’t need HBO Max when you’ve got five opinionated cousins and a bottle of wine.
But in America, our closest friend is the one we can mute. And we love it that way.
It’s not entirely our fault. For decades, we’ve been slowly seduced into this low-maintenance lifestyle of solitary delight. Television doesn’t forget your birthday. Television never borrows your tools and returns them broken. Television doesn’t make you go to baby showers or eat vegan lasagna. It simply shows up, does its little dance, and waits patiently until you’ve finished eating dinner in front of it like a civilized animal.
We have confused accessibility with intimacy. We think because we can see people on screens that we are connected to them. We think because we comment “so cute!” on a coworker’s Instagram photo of their dog in a Halloween costume, that counts as being a good friend. Meanwhile, that coworker wouldn’t recognize you in a lineup unless you were holding a coffee mug with the company’s logo.
And when you suggest, Hey, maybe we should build community, people respond as if you’ve invited them to a séance.
I once tried to start a neighborhood potluck. I made fliers and slipped them under doormats like a community-minded raccoon. One woman texted me to say she was gluten-free and spiritually opposed to casseroles. Another guy replied with just the word “unsubscribe.” One neighbor opened her door, read the flier, and shut it in my face without saying a word. It’s hard to build a sense of belonging when everyone’s already booked to binge something that’s been on Netflix since two administrations ago.
If we keep going this way, where does it end? Do we just plug into our favorite sitcom and stop answering the doorbell altogether? Will future generations be born with HDMI ports at the base of their skull? Our children, if we ever bother to interact long enough to produce them, will know nothing of phone calls or potlucks or the sheer awkward ecstasy of unplanned social interaction. They’ll just blink to change the channel and sip their meal replacements through the same tube that feeds their soul.
I don’t want to live in that world. I want to know someone who burns the rice. Someone whose dog barks the entire time we try to talk. Someone who tells me too much about their digestive issues but still shows up when I need help moving a couch. Friends are messy. They’re exhausting. But they make the day real. You don’t get that from Season 9 of anything.
So maybe it’s time to stand up. Stretch. Turn off the TV. Walk outside and talk to the neighbor whose name you forgot but whose Wi-Fi you’ve been stealing for years. Invite someone over, even if your sink is full of dishes and your toilet paper is the kind they sell in gas stations. Because the moment you choose people over pixels, you begin to remember what being human actually feels like.
It’s not as smooth as streaming. But it’s a whole lot more interesting.
Join us in making the world a better place – you’ll be glad that you did. Cheers friends.