alt Hacker News>> And maintaining relationships is a lot of work
this is really true, and I'm hopeful that people will prioritize fewer, deeper relationships because it's so much work. I feels like networking in all the superficial ways has allowed people to (believe they) have way more relationships than is healthy or even possible. I don't know what the upper limit is (likely different for every individual) but it's way less than 500 professional connections on linkedin, or thousands of personal connections. For deep, meaningful, valuable - and rewarding! - relationships it's probably less than ten. If you're not prepared to let the rest just atrophy and even disappear, you're not going to be happy.
In my experience, it is mostly like 3-5 very close friends and about a dozen "good" friends. One thing I hear from so many people is the mindset of "well, they didn't call me back" and turn it into score keeping. Not all relationships are going to be equitable but they all require investment or they wither.