They May Be Just Acquaintances. They’re Important to You Anyway

I don't think that is necessarily so, because I don't lead an active life at all, yet a lot of my weak ties anchor me to a sense of place and to my own humanity. For instance, the cafe owner I meet every morning, the receptionist at work, the janitors in my building -- I actually enjoy exchanging pleasantries with them and just talking to thtem. Most of the time I don't even know their names, but when I don't see them, I miss them. All these micro-interactions are meaningful and consequential to me.

I never used to think this -- I'm pretty much an introvert who loves being alone. But now that I'm older, I've started to realize how important these interactions are, especially when they're missing. It's a misconception to think that only the close relationships (spouse, immediate family) in our lives matter. The fact is, the not-close but repeated relationships in our lives also matter. There's a certain emotional fullness to comes with human interaction.

I had an abundance of these interactions when I lived in Chicago, where strangers would talk to each other and where there's just a higher EQ level in the milieu (it is the midwest after all). I got to know the cafe owner of my old workplace well, and right before I left my job there, he cooked me a free last meal. That gesture was so touching to me even though to this day we never learned each other's names. I live in Seattle now, where random people don't talk to each other (there's a culture of respecting each other's privacy, coupled with social reservedness and passivity), and I now feel palpable sense of emptiness and a dearth of social warmth -- and it truly affects my mood.

Yes. The most cited paper of all time in the field of sociology is Granovetter's 1973 paper entitled "The Strength of Weak Ties" [1]

The basic reasoning is that humans can only form limited number of strong ties, and the strong ties are already strongly connected/correlated to each other so limited new information enters.

Whereas with weak ties, the connection pool is more decorrelated, so more new information can flow through. It's not just the size of the pool -- though that's part of it -- but that the pool is more unrelated so there are more sources of independent information.

This is why it's more likely for people to find a spouse, hear about a job opportunity, etc. through weak ties rather than strong ones.

[1] https://snap.stanford.edu/class/cs224w-readings/granovetter7...

Perhaps because there's less at stake?

If you hire or refer a close friend and then you become coworkers, the nature of the work relationship could negatively affect the friendship, and people may not want to risk that if it's a friendship that they really value.

If they're just an acquaintance it's not such a big deal.

I’ve heard this too, and my understanding is that your pool of acquaintances is much much larger, so there are way more opportunities.