The Companion 002: Friendship icks

This week I tried Bumble BFF and realised I have higher standards than I thought.

Movie still from Universal Pictures, Bridesmaids (2011)

“It’s interesting to me that you have absolutely no friends. Do you know why that’s interesting? Here’s a friend standing directly in front of you, trying to talk to you, and you choose to talk about having no friends.” – Megan Price, Bridesmaids

Sometimes, as a journalist, you do things ‘for the story’. When I decided to download Bumble BFF at the beginning of this week, I thought maybe I would spend a few weeks on the app until, magically, I would gain a deep insight into why more of us are converting our romantic swiping to platonic. But within just a few hours, something else entirely happened.

According to a survey by Bumble, 60 per cent of people are open to meeting new friends online in 2023. As much as I don’t trust special interest data gathered for capitalist purposes, it is undeniable that online culture has shifted to encompass people intentionally seeking friendships online. Anecdotally, I hear more people speak about their experiences of using swipe-style apps to find friends, whereas a few years ago, some of my friends were shocked that I had become close with women I had met via Twitter.

While I would be surprised if apps became the predominant way in which people make friends in the future, as someone interested in the changing culture of friendship, I accept that nowadays apps are part of the story. They are proliferating, and, as with much of online culture, addictive. I certainly felt that trickling, tingling thrill when I had my first match on BFF. The dopamine-induced hit of knowing that someone had seen a piece of me that I had intimately curated, and wanted to know her better.

Very quickly though, I was thinking about the downsides. The blurred-out portions of the app, available only to those willing to open their wallets. The constant tiny rejections. The thought of larger rejections to come; which, as a friend pointed out, could be even more painful than being turned down by a nascent romantic prospect after a first date. “After all,” she said, “theoretically you can have an unlimited number of friends.” And, I had started thinking about something else: ‘friendship icks’.

Last week, the legendary sex educator and relationship advisor, Oloni, asked her Twitter followers about their friendship icks. An ‘ick’ is a sometimes irrational expression of repulsion that you feel when someone, usually a romantic prospect, does something that really repels you and is hard to recover from. Like (taking very specific examples definitely not from my own life), never changing their bedsheets, or following you around a store.

According to Prospect magazine, the ick did not emerge as a term from Love Island, as many think, but actually dates back at least as far as 1979, and in the 1980s was “was used interchangeably with ‘the yuck factor’”.

This is relevant because the deep insight I had hoped to gain into the culture of friendship by using Bumble BFF in those first few hours was swiftly supplanted by an ever-growing list of ‘icks’. These included:

• Anyone with closeup pics only of their face

• Anyone not smiling

• Anyone using too many emojis, especially 🤣

• Anyone using ‘girlies’ unironically

• Anyone making friends solely based on their star sign

• Anyone who is not a woman

And really, what all this left me was a specific thought: Am I just a hater? Am I, like Annie in Bridesmaids, the problem?

Interestingly though, in contrast to my quite petty list above, what struck me about the responses to Oloni’s thread was the pain they shrouded. In my opinion, ‘ick’ is not the word for when a friend betrays you on an intimate level. On a level that feels like the glass globe of your world has been shattered into dangerous, sharp-edged pieces.

One woman spoke of a friend who had invited her to go on holiday, despite knowing she and her family had just been made homeless. Many others recounted friends who had abandoned their friendships in favour of a romantic relationship, or who had been actively mean to them behind their backs.

Almost every tweet was covering up a true panacea for the issue it described; that people need more space to talk about the pain and trauma (and I do not use that word lightly) that their friendships have caused them.

So I guess the real question here is whether or not framing things that have turned us off our friendships as ‘icks’ helps build the culture of friendship to which we aspire.

For my part, I know that I just simply can’t be trusted with my initial reactions to people I meet. I try to be outwardly kind and open, but as with everyone, I’m making my own judgements and misjudgements. I have been misjudged too: one of my now best friends likes to tell the story of how she almost rejected my friendship in high school because I once accidentally spat on her when laughing.

On reflection, I realised this was especially true of the things I had identified as ‘icks’ from Bumble. All of the things I professed to be a turnoff I see in my friends, from being heavily into star signs to the prolific, joyous use of emojis. These traits or choices are not things that sully or dull our relationships, because unlike with some of the icks attached to Oloni’s tweet, they are not actively harmful. To judge someone on them is, I have decided, entirely ridiculous when they show up in my life in beautiful ways. I don't want to be friends with people just like me, even if it is tempting to dismiss them on the apps.

Essentially, I don’t think I believe in friendship icks at all. Either, they are inconsequential character traits that I should work hard at getting over or not be annoyed by, or they are much bigger issues that render the friendship incompatible or actively harmful.

So would I recommend Bumble BFF? Yes, I think so. I have had some nice conversations so far and made at least a few matches with people that feel exciting and warm. Some of the women I ended up matching with did share interests with me — such as football or baking. But once I loosened up my personal criteria, I spoke to a few others with whom, on paper, I have less in common.

I’ll keep you posted as to whether or not any of those matches convert into actual friendships.