Gatto, the famous educator who quit teaching to condemn the school system and won awards, made an important distinction between "networking" and "community" in his writings. A network is an impersonal resource, whereas a community is more personal, like a group of friends. For example, you have your professional network of people who are useful to you to do your job or to make income, vs your community of friends who you enjoy spending time with.

Although intended as a criticism of school (which is clearly a network, not a community), this distinction can also inform our idea of friendship in an important way. Gatto wrote before the days of Facebook, but his distinction was prophetic. Facebook is very obviously a network, not a community. No offense to any of you, but I don't count Facebook friends as friends - and I think everybody knows that. (How could anybody really have hundreds of friends?) Some of my Facebook friends are real friends, but even in that case, interacting with them on Facebook doesn't count as interacting as a community in my mind. When I send a friend request it's usually an indication that I'd like to *become* friends, and my friends list is friends + acquaintances, which is another word for "potential friends". The internet is a way to make plans to hang out in person, which is the legitimate community where friendships develop. Communicating solely online would usually be called "acquaintances" or "networking" in my view.

I have several close friends and have had many others throughout my life, with whom I spend time doing common interests together by choice. This is why school is a network, not a community - students aren't there by choice. The same is true of your workplace network, and is why I rarely become friends with co-workers. The friends I had as a child were not kids from a school math club or something like that, they were friends who I invited to my house and who invited me to their house in an unstructured way.

This is important because I think many people have lost community and replaced it with networks. Networks aren't bad, they have many uses. I prefer online banking rather than old fashioned bank tellers because I want my banking to be impersonal and automated and with as little human interaction as possible (precisely because my bank is not my community). Networks can even be useful to try to find new friends, but they can't replace community. When I was a child I specifically avoided joining clubs and groups in order to have free time after school during which I hung out with my friends in an unstructured way. As an adult I've joined tons of clubs and groups but I still see friendship the way I saw it as a child. Not that I intend to stop going to groups or clubs, but I want to prioritize hanging out with friends in less official ways, like I used to do as a child. For example, I prefer having friends over for board games rather than going to a board game event that costs $3 - it's less structured. (Pathetically, the $3 event is only popular *because* it costs $3 - if they made it free, nobody would show up!) A lot of people say they don't have time for hanging out because they have lots of events going on, and that's the opposite of my priorities - I go to official, structured events only if I have nothing better to do.

I don't know how to express precisely the feature of modern society that's caused our communities to be replaced with networks. If I said "capitalism" a lot of people could relate, but it wouldn't be exactly accurate: yard sales are also capitalism, but they feel more community-like and I have no problem with them. It's more like people want something from people. I shouldn't have to subscribe to newsletters or see things that are Recommended for Me or Suggested for Me just to hang out with my friends. That stuff is so prevalent I can barely even read a book without being subjected to it, for crying out loud.