Interesting metaphor for social groups

[firecat]

plymouth just posted a fascinating metaphor in one of my friends' friends-locked posts.

Social groups are hollow spheres - everyone's on the edge and noone is in the middle. That's the theory I came up with a few years back to explain the fact that all my friends seem to think they're on the fringes somehow. I guess you could say there are different shells to the spheres and some people are in the inner shells and some in the outer shells. Kinda like atoms. People are electrons. Nobody is at the nucleus.

I think this is a good way of spinning one's thinking about social groups in a way that makes it OK and normal to feel "on the outside" of one. (Although it doesn't explain why everyone thinks social groups have an inside that they are outside of and everyone else is inside of.)

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Hunh.

'Cause, see, I am in the middle of at least one social group -- the social group of people who know me.

That's not the same social group as other social groups -- it overlaps other social groups, but it's its own distinct entity.

And I really do, genuinely, feel like I'm at the center of the social group defined by me.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

Well there was a continuation to the theory about how if you throw a party you get to experience being the nucleus but it wasn't very coherently described. I don't feel that I can rightly call "all my friends" a social group given that every time I throw a party two things happen - 1) people who have never seen each other meet and 2) people say "wow, I didn't know you were friends with [foo]! I thought that was a totally different social crowd. I primarily associate you with people from [bar]!" (where [bar] is probably wherever I met the speaker). If it was a coherent social group, as opposed to "people I know from various places" that wouldn't happen. I suppose that if I threw parties more often this would stop happening. But I lack the energy and social gravity to do this.