Talking Shade
If you are part of any friend group of large size, say over 20 to 25 people, this is a common occourance. This behavior can be characterized by the following behaviors. Treating each of the people in the friend group as nodes in a directed network graph, Person A lying, exaggerating events, or violating trust with another Person B in the same friend group that they personally are not friends with.
The edge between two friends, if it even exists, can range from just acquaintances to close friend, to lover.
In this scenario, there is no edge between Person A or Person B, or there is an edge that only goes in one direction. This presents a situation where Person A has nothing to lose, while talking about Person B can sometimes advance their own status in the friend group.
In some situations, these can have the cascading effect of people in the network strengthening some relationships and weakening other relationships. In the worst case, this can have the effect of completely splitting the friend group into two. Of course, other factors play an major role in this process, including how well connected the original network graph is–a measure that be estimated through various methods, the setting of the friend group, and how bimodal the friend group already was.
We can lay these decisions out on a payoff graph between two people. We can assign two decisions to each player; either to ‘throw shade’ about the other person, or to not talk about the other person. The payoffs can represent the net change in the social status–in that friend group.
Person B
throw shade / dont
+——————+
| -20 | 10 |
+——-+———+
| 10 | 0 |
+——————+
In this case we can see that there is no __ equilibrium here. For each person, if the other person is not ‘throwing shade’, then doing so is always favorable.
We can draw a simple sample friend group where this behavior causes a cascading effect and breaks the group into two. We can denote the strength of a relationship between two people on a scale from 0-3. We can also add the rule that if there is a Person C who is friends with both Person A and Person B, and if Person A ‘throws shade’ unto Person B, then Person C will add 1 to the stronger edge and subtract 1 from the weaker edge.
B – C 2
B – D 2
A – C 1
A – D 3
C – D 1