Temporary Bubbles of Social Cohesion

The healthy method for forming delusional friendships

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Earlier this week, I had the distinct pleasure of viewing Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith in a movie theater. This is my favorite Star Wars film out of the entire canon, and, considering how the movie was released in 2005, I never imagined I would have the opportunity to see it on a theater screen.

I intended to see the film over the weekend. Instead of buying my ticket ahead of time, I naively assumed only hardcore dorks like myself would be interested in paying to watch a 20-year-old Star Wars movie and pulled up to the theater just a few minutes before showtime. Instead of a grieving Padmé and traitorous Anakin, I was met by a line wrapped around the building and a besieged theater employee informing people the showing was sold out.

The weeknight showing I attended — after pre-purchasing my ticket — was much less in-demand, to the point that I texted my girlfriend “I think I’m getting a personal viewing” with five minutes until showtime. But right before the lights dimmed and trailers rolled, two separate groups of friends strolled into the theater.

My initial reaction was to be consumed by the specific brand of unreasonable irritation you only feel when you have something wholly unearned denied from you at the last moment, like when the last passenger to board your flight claims the empty seat next to you. In your heart, you know you were not entitled to a neighbor-less flight, but you cannot help but feel frustrated with your fellow passenger who was so consumed by poor planning or disastrous luck that they dangled the false hope of spacious legroom and dual underseat storage in front of you then snatched it back at the last second.

However, as Revenge of the Sith unfolded, I found myself glad for my nameless and invisible companions. Instead of smirking silently to myself at the overwrought dialogue and aggressive voice acting that has so endeared the prequel trilogy to a certain segment of Star Wars fans, I was guffawing in tandem with the two other groups in the theater. We never spoke to each other, and they departed in darkness while I nodded along to the soundtrack of the end credits, but for 140 minutes in Grand Lake Theater #4 we were friends, socially bonded by George Lucas’ unique flair for writing scripts.

I have been thinking a lot about these temporary friends of late. Partially because I have been traveling more often than normal, and no situation creates temporary friends quite like an airplane.

A few years ago, I was trapped on a plane that was mechanically ready and able to depart but stuck on the tarmac due to a significant traffic jam. The pilot’s announcements were either issued in Dothraki or Esperanto, leaving all the passengers befuddled as to when we would actually take off.

My row promptly anointed ourselves body language experts, trading opinions as to what the facial expressions and subtle gestures of the flight attendants indicated as to our odds of departing Sacramento. But the moment our plane was wheels-up, the bubble of social cohesion burst, and my cohort retreated to noise-cancelling headphones and $15 cocktails and sudoku puzzles, never exchanging another word.

A similar phenomenon occurs whenever my BART train is delayed underground, as the darkness and tinny speakers conspire to make it impossible for passengers unable to discern a single thing about when we will be on the move again. As the seconds tick by and the delay slides from imperceptible to routine to irritating, a social bubble is slowly formed, empowering commuters and students and tourists to shed the urban social norm of never acknowledging one another. First eyebrows are raised in tandem. Then shrugs are exchanged and eyes are mutually rolled. And then, on the rare occasions when a delay extends longer than 60 seconds, a voice breaks the silence to ask if the conductor has mentioned the cause.

Eventually, the train groans and squeals back to life, and everyone’s eyes return immediately to their phones or books or windows. The bubble of social cohesion has burst, and it is no longer couth to acknowledge passerby.

Many social bubbles are formed outside of transit, and many of these last far longer than their train and plane counterparts. In high school, I volunteered for a week at a summer camp for kids. Phones were banned for the privacy of the children, and the camp’s remoteness meant you would go the entire session without seeing a face that wasn’t working at or attending the camp.

Aided in part by teenage brain chemistries, social bubbles exploded onto the scene. Bonding that would have normally required weeks of time in normal social settings happened literally overnight. Camp counselors who unfurled their bunk bed sheets as strangers woke up to polar plunge in the lake with campers as best friends. Flirtations that boys would have spent an entire semester ginning up the courage to execute were exchanged after camper lights out by night three. Inside jokes flourished with the fortitude of an invasive species.

One month later, deep in the throes of senior year football practices and college applications, the bubble of social cohesion didn’t so much burst as disappear. The change happened at the same rate at which one goes bankrupt: gradually, and then suddenly. Impossible romances became stories your friends would never believe. The circle of inside jokes closed to contain no one at all.

There is nothing inherently melancholic about the bursting of a temporary bubble; after all, the bubble’s transient nature is what made it so special in the first place. It would be bizarre and even annoying if all the single-function group chats in your life continued to fire off contextual memes months later. The bachelor party is over, and you have no interest in keeping in touch with the groom’s dental school roommate who lives in Tennessee. In fact, you might have already forgotten his name.

But for one four-day weekend in Scottsdale, you and Steve or Mike or whatever his name is played essential roles in your mutual friend’s big weekend. The social bubble may have burst, but the lifeless group chat slowly falling off your screen will live on as a testament to the temporary bonds formed in the Airbnb.

It has been 30 years since Robert Putnam published the seminal essay “Bowling Alone.” In the piece, Putnam posits that the significant decline in membership of social clubs, labor unions, volunteer groups, and fraternal organizations over the latter half of the 20th century is a major cause for the decline in civic participation across the United States.

The “Bowling Alone” essay proved popular, and Putnam adapted it into a 544-page book five years later. And decades and a second Trump term later, as political scientists and pundits argue back and forth on cable news about why young men are growing up more conservative than their female counterparts, Putnam’s analysis appears prescient. Male loneliness is an underlying cause of the massive digital audiences for proud misogynists like Andrew Tate and a key source of male social alienation.

Of course, women feel lonely at near-identical rates to men. But women are far more likely to reach out to their support networks for help when they feel lonely, and far, far less likely to commit horrific acts of violence due to their social isolation. These two differences combined with the significant partisan split between men and women in the United States has meant that much of the discourse around isolation has centered around how to combat the issue for men specifically.

Temporary bubbles of social cohesion are not a magic cure. If we want to return to the days of bowling with friends, we can and should form labor unions, sign up for dance classes, take cooking lessons at the local community center, play intramural volleyball, and meet our neighbors.

But I am convinced that it is also healthy to romanticize your life every now and then. When stuck on transit or at a three-day work conference, while the movie goes on or your plane doesn’t, allow the temporary bubble to form. Make friends without ever learning their names. The good feelings will endure long after the credits roll and the bubble bursts.

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Things I Recommend This Week

• Inside ICE Air: Flight Attendants on Deportation Planes Say Disaster Is “Only a Matter of Time” | Propublica

• The Whistleblower |

  The Outlaw Ocean Project

• All My Homies Hate Skrillex | Timbah.On.Toast (YouTube)

• The Chaos Company | Vanity Fair

• Small Nations In Big Wars | Defector

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I received multiple complaints about my last post due to my failure to disclose my personal favorite donut. Picking just one is impossible, as my favorite variety is bakery-dependent, but contenders include the Tops old fashioned with sour cream glaze, the maple buttermilk donut at Colonial Donuts, and the frosted donut with jelly beans that Dunkin’ used to make around Easter and hasn’t since I was in, like, third grade.

What’s yours?