Friendship Triangles
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/t-magazine/friendships-social-media.html
This article is written by Andrew O’Hagan who is reminiscing on his childhood friendship with Mark MacDonald. In this article, O’Hagan tells of his childhood companion that went rogue. He tried to find MacDonald through means of social media and trying to find contact through friends and family who, unfortunately, have not stayed in contact with him either. This is applicable to the friendship triangles that we have been seeing in lecture. Since no one has been in contact with MacDonald, we can classify these edges as weak ties. In this triangle, there are two weak ties stemming from MacDonald to O’Hagan and to the friend/family member connected to MacDonald. O’Hagan also used Facebook as a social network to try to find MacDonald. Unfortunately, the “Six Degrees of Separation” principle, in which states that everybody is separated by only six other people, could not help find MacDonald.
O’Hagan is contemplating why his friendship with MacDonald did not stay as strong. He wonders if technology and social media could have an influence on the strength of their friendship. If this were the case, then the edges between O’Hagan, MacDonald, and the friend/family member connecting these two would be strong ties, making this a stable triangle since everyone is friends with each other. This friendship triangle also exemplifies the Strong Triadic Closure Property in a real life situation, since the three edges connecting these three individuals would all be strong ties.