Your discord friends can't come over and help you clean up after a flood, or watch your dogs while you're away on a sudden emergency, or cook you a meal when you're grieving a loss
I'll make the counter argument that -- although I value those things and try to provide them to friends in need -- all of those can be addressed by hiring someone.
On the other hand, I've recently received fantastic emotional support from a friend who moved away a few years ago. We've seen each other in person only a handful of times since then, but of all my friends, she happened to be the one with the experience and attitude to help me.
Incidentally, I'll add that I'm the type of person to provide those types of support to others, but the vast majority of my friends are not. That doesn't make them bad friends, it just means that I have a service disposition while they don't. I think there's a vast range of qualities that people seek and experience from friends and you're going to have a hard time objectively rating them on any sort of scale.
Yeah and you can rent a truck every time you need to haul something, but it's nice when your friend lets you borrow his - and his manpower/time. And yeah, you can hire an emergency remediation company, or chef, or psychologist for your friends, but that seems... impersonal to me?
I'm not trying to say there's no value to Discord friends, but I do think it's substantially less valuable to the human condition than real, in-person friends.
I mean, to be blunt, it sounds to me like you value people for what services they can provide to you rather than what friendship they provide.
Again, friendship takes many forms and there are countless ways to express it. You're judging others for valuing these expressions differently than you do.
This is how I can tell you don’t get it. It’s not about the value of your friends doing those things for you which you can hire someone for, it’s the value YOU get out of doing those things for your friends.
I'll make the counter argument that -- although I value those things and try to provide them to friends in need -- all of those can be addressed by hiring someone.
On the other hand, I've recently received fantastic emotional support from a friend who moved away a few years ago. We've seen each other in person only a handful of times since then, but of all my friends, she happened to be the one with the experience and attitude to help me.
Incidentally, I'll add that I'm the type of person to provide those types of support to others, but the vast majority of my friends are not. That doesn't make them bad friends, it just means that I have a service disposition while they don't. I think there's a vast range of qualities that people seek and experience from friends and you're going to have a hard time objectively rating them on any sort of scale.