PhiloPsycho Freedom

In line with Living on the Productive Edge, this post is also a theory that was brought to my attention and, as far as I know, originally created by my friend. I've taken what he's said and put my own spin on it, filling in the blanks that he either hasn't come up with or neglected to tell me.

With this philosophy of social interaction, he claims that the smaller the group when going out, the better the time you'll have. To me, this seems a little too simple because it doesn't leave any room for having a bad time, when that is clearly a possibility. To compensate for this fault, I alter it to: the smaller the group, the higher the stakes are. If we reduce the group down to be only one person (not much of a group, I suppose), then we can see the most extreme form of this theory.

I propose that the stakes are raised in the sense that a good time will become even better, while a bad time will become even worse. Though, my friend makes a good point in saying that a bad time (as long as it's not excessively bad (e.g. serious injury, death, etc.)) is still a good story to recall after the fact. If we look at the bad time like that, then I suppose he's right in his assumption that you will have a "good" time almost no matter what.

But, how does being by yourself make a time better? Well, think about it this way: suppose you're a very social person and meet people in your classes all the time (university perspective). As the number of people you know and sit with in the class expands, the less opportunities you have to meet new people in the class (unless someone in your current group knows them). This is because you feel obliged to sit with your new friends, and I'm not implying any negativity to this view, but it limits your ability to meet any other singular person in the class without the risk of your friends feeling like you've ditched them.

Getting past this, when you are out, if you get an 'in' with a group, you can automatically make a whole new group of friends, if only for the night. An instance of this that happened to my friend was when he was in Toronto on a work term by himself: he saw a club with a huge line, but decided to walk around it straight to the front just to see what would happen. When he got to the front, the exchange between him and the bouncer went like this:

Bouncer: Don't you see the line?

Friend: Yeah, just thought that I'd see what was going on.

Bouncer: You here by yourself?

Friend: Yeah

Bouncer: Come on in!

Another instance was when he approached a group of people smoking outside a club. A DJ he liked was spinning there and he was going to check them out. He approached this group and asked how the show was, to which they complained about the brevity of the show. After a bit of chatting, they said that they had a spare VIP ticket and asked if he'd like to join them.

This is, however, purely from a male perspective. Women by themselves may be at higher risk of something happening. Overall, the theory (a layperson's hypothesis) seems to be holding up, but is only available to people who can weather the harshness of rejection and accept the risk of a terrible night.