A friend of a friend
- by Pixel
My coworker Kevin Wilson and I played with this for a while today. However, in divvying up the rights to its usage, Wilson called Myspace rights and regular network broadcasting rights. Therefore, this shall not appear on my pilot, lest it airs in satellite or radio broadcasting. Sans syndication. Of course.
In any case, what does one call a friend of a friend? Is it a friend squared? A friend once removed? How about an auxiliary friend?
But then we get into some tricky math. If a friend of a friend is a friend squared, wouldn’t that suggest a greater friend than the one you had before? What would make it less so? Perhaps a friend to the one over a friend, friend? A friend coefficient, if you will?
One over a friend? Or is that too sexual? No? Nobody else thought that?
Meh, perhaps I should have given you more time to think. Anyway, a friend once removed makes a lot of sense, though it is hard to say and sort of implies a difference of generations… though probably not to everybody. A friend once removed is also useful, as you can increase the ‘once’ to however many times it is removed
My problem with it is that it’s difficult to say and requires some explanation.
Moving on.
Wilson and I finally settled on an auxiliary friend being the term used, but now I’m not so sure why. Really, it’s almost the worst one: It causes no humorous reaction and it’s not really accurate. So we’ll continue our quest.
This is the part where I bring up the concept of enemies.
As we all know, an enemy of an enemy is a friend.
Or, mathematically:
E x E = F
Does this also mean that a friend of a friend is an enemy?
F x F = E?
Not necessarily. Take this example using two random numbers:
3 x 3 = 9 ? 9 x 9 = 3
Therefore, a friend of a friend could be simplified into
(E x E) ^ 2
as per our original claim, though what that would equal is up to you.
My current estimate is that a friend is your other half, or:
F = U / 2
Therefore, if we go back to what we had before:
E x E = U / 2
2 E ^ 2 = U
iff U = 1, then
E ^ 2 = 1 / 2
E = ± ? 1 / 2
Or, approximately:
E = ± 0.707106781
Assuming an enemy is a negative thing, then E = -.707.
Similarly, then, a friend of a friend, or a friend to the second power, would be something of a .25 friend, which, if you think about it, makes a lot of sense.
(Math majors and logicians, I realize I equivocated by saying a friend was your other half then making a friend numberically equal to half of you, but the math just doesn’t work out well if you and your friend are equal, you understand.)
(also, ? is precisely equal to three)
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My coworker Kevin Wilson and I played with this for a while today. However, in divvying up the rights to its usage, Wilson called Myspace rights and regular network broadcasting rights. Therefore, this shall not appear on my pilot, lest it airs in satellite or radio broadcasting. Sans syndication. Of course. In any case, what…
Well, you could say a friend of a friend is the square root of a friend.
That allows for humourous reactions, as in High school maths we were told to simplify it down when pronouncing ‘square root’, so we merely said ‘root’. Root being Australian slang for a verb suggesting sexual intercourse, it now means that saying someone is a ‘root friend’ (friend of a friend) is similar to saying you wish sexual intercourse with said person, and you think of them as a friend.
It allows for several random exchanges.
“Who’s this?”
“This is Tom. He’s a root friend.”
“… Is that something like ‘friends with benefits’, or what?”