💡 In defence of friction

[kesbeacon]

Friction gets a bad rap. We talk about it in terms of delay, hassle, complications, waste; a difficult situation or person might ‘create friction’ in otherwise ‘good’ relationships; reducing friction is a common goal in organisations; there can be friction between two peoples; when we want to increase efficiency we ‘streamline’; new tech might be ‘frictionless’; etc etc etc. A heavy weight for a fundamental fact of the universe.

The list of things we use to lubricate our way through life and try to reduce friction is very long. Politeness is a big one. Contactless payment. Personal assistants.

Sometimes I’ve dreamed of a crunchy tabletop RPG system that works like a well-oiled machine; every action has its response, every move suggests the next, there’s always a stat for that and you can easily update them as things change. Now, partly what I’m describing is a videogame. Partly what I’m describing is, for an enthusiast of the medium, boring.

It is very easy to be in this world and try to do that in the most frictionless way possible. Not only easy, the world pressures you into doing it. Just accept the cookies on the website, it’s easier. Don’t bother strangers. Humans are inevitably a stain on nature and should be kept out of pristine areas. For your convenience we’ve automated our phone system. Make sure you put all the relevant information in the first paragraph. I could probably keep going for a year but I am going to cut myself off here.

Getting invested in this, I’ve come to believe, is a desire for self-effacement, to be there without being there, to do the very closest thing to not existing, which is existing without leaving a wake. It also tends to have the effect of discouraging conflict, even productive conflict, because this creates friction. And if you never have a conflict you don’t need to have, you really struggle to have the ones you can’t avoid. The friction you avoid builds up until it’s a nearly insurmountable wall, prone to causing crashes.

Meanwhile, it seems more difficult than ever to Just Get Things Done. Getting any services involves sixty pages of forms, at least a couple of phone calls, probably being referred back and forward a few times, and provision of a lot of information (which must be in the correct format!) Trying to buy things online requires increasing levels of savvy to avoid getting scammed. Hell, even playing a mobile game often involves ads you have to click through four times!

There’s a profound asymmetry here. On the one hand, the individual is encouraged and often encourages themself, with perfectly good intentions, to reduce their impact. On the other, the organisation gets to introduce huge amounts of friction into the individual’s life in an effort to reduce the friction it experiences.

There’s an interesting resonance between this and the way carbon footprints are used to shift responsibility to consumers and away from corporations; obviously I’m not saying that we should all just burn piles of plastic on the beach or whatever, just like I’m not saying we should go through life picking fights with everyone we meet and farting at customer service workers, but we can be environmentally conscious and pro-social individuals without accepting the responsibility others want to offload onto us.

Existing without friction is a dream that produces nightmares. If you’re trying not to leave a wake, firstly you’ll fail, secondly you’ll struggle to handle conflict when it’s necessary, and thirdly you’ll find yourself rootless and avoiding developing meaningful relationships, which can be as shallow as the pharmacist who recognises you or as deep as a friend you want to spend your life with.

And you’ll never have a frictionless life, because you’re still where corporations and governments and anything and anyone with power dumps the friction they don’t want to deal with.