A friend of mine sent me a text last month. “Hope you’re doing well,” he said. “Any time for a call, just to catch up?” It’s always nice when a friend reaches out — this friend is particularly diligent at staying in touch — so we set a time for a chat the next day.
It was only later, after the friendly call, that I glanced at his contact card on my phone. Our previous calls were listed, along with the date of each, and I noticed that he and I talk every five weeks. Not every five weeks or so, but every five weeks to the day. Each time preceded by a text.
So then I looked at my text messages. And it turns out that my friend sends me a Let’s catch up text every five weeks, the same interval as the calls, exactly one day before each of our calls. And the wording of the texts is always the same.
But the wording alternates. Some weeks it was, “Hey, how’s it going? Let’s catch up!” And some weeks it was, “What’s up? Just checking in.” And some weeks it was what I got most recently, “Hope you’re doing well. Any time for a call, just to catch up?” The wording, I discovered after scrolling back a few months, repeats in a consistent pattern.
In other words, my friend has automated our friendship. He has me on some kind of rotation, probably with a lot of other friends, and he’s got an app or something — he’s smart, it could be a piece of code he’s written himself — to automatically ping a friend once every five weeks, set up a catch-up call, and keep his friendships alive and up-to-date with exerting the most minimal effort.
I wanted to be offended, but I was too much in awe. At a certain point in life, it’s hard to keep up with the friends you’ve made along the way. Finding a system to reliably mechanize the process seems like a perfect emblem of friendship in 2025 — a little bit human and a little bit robot. On the other hand, the minute I cracked his Friendship Code, I resolved to disrupt it. If he’s the kind of friend who prefers predictable and systematized interactions, I’m the kind who prefers chaos.
I waited exactly four weeks, six days, twenty-three hours, fifty-nine minutes, and fifty-five seconds, and then I sent him a text. “Hey, how’s it going?” I asked, followed by, “Let’s catch up!” I chose that version because, according to my calculations, that was the next one up. A few seconds later, I got a text from him: “Hey, how’s it going? Let’s catch up!” To which I replied with a simple “?”
I didn’t get a response immediately, so I sent another “?” And then added, “Are you there or is this AI?”
An hour or so later, he called me up.
“I told you I had a tickler file for my friends,” he said, without even bothering to say “Hi” or exchange opening pleasantries. “So don’t act like it’s something you discovered on your own.”
I didn’t recall that, but tried to explain that I wasn’t really upset. I was just throwing a wrench into his perfect system.
“Why would you do that?” he asked. “This is a near-perfect way to stay in touch. If I left it to you, we’d basically never talk. This way, I get to keep up with my friends without any of the friction associated with remembering to reach out. The program sends out the monthly text, it responds to whatever you reply with an invitation to talk on the phone, it then takes that invitation and automatically puts it on my calendar, and it reminds me a few minutes before our call.”
I told him how impressed I was by his creative approach to modern friendship, and I promised never to distrust his system again. And then I asked him if he’d be willing to share his system with me. “I’d like to do the same thing with my other friends,” I said.
“Happy to share it,” he said. “I’ll send you the mini-app I coded once I get your Venmo payment for $500.”
I suggested that perhaps he might just give me the code.
“I would,” he said, “but you’re at the every-five-weeks tier. My every-two-weeks-or-higher friends get the code for free.”
I told him how impressed I was by his creative approach to modern friendship, again.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
