00:00Music
00:16If we learned about female friendships based solely on television and movies,
00:20it would be a pretty bleak picture.
00:21The message we see is that while women may be complex, their friendships are not.
00:25I think there's a lot of portrayal that female relationships are very superficial,
00:29they're very fleeting, they're very dramatic.
00:32And social media is affecting the way men and women think about their friendships today.
00:37We'll look at squads and the role they play in our friendships.
00:39Guys, what connotations do you guys have with the term squad?
00:43Like what does it mean to you?
00:45I think of Instagram.
00:46Instagram.
00:47Like photos of like a squad, like a silhouette on a beach, like peace signs everywhere.
00:52Totally.
00:53I think of like pre-gaming for the club.
00:56That's what I think of when we hear squads.
00:58The way these squads are sort of organized very much maps onto how we saw cliques
01:03and how we've understood cliques from a social psychological perspective for decades.
01:06So that part's not super new.
01:08Yeah.
01:09The label, I think.
01:10The label squad.
01:11I think of Taylor Swift.
01:12You do.
01:13Yes.
01:14The ultimate squad.
01:15True.
01:15She pretty much invited that hashtag squad goals.
01:20Yeah.
01:20It's interesting.
01:21All of her squad members are very samey, right?
01:24They're all pretty.
01:25They're all pretty.
01:26They're blonde.
01:27They're samey.
01:28They're white.
01:28Totally.
01:29You know, the squads that we're sort of exposed to tend to be full of women who are higher
01:33status.
01:34Beyonce has taken that back a little bit with her squad, but you know, you're still attractive
01:39to get into a squad.
01:41You know, all the things that we know give girls and women social capital.
01:44I mean, I think that Taylor Swift squad in some ways is like no different from any other
01:48squad.
01:49Like, you're collecting, not like you're collecting friends, but you do want a community.
01:54But they're not all really friends.
01:55Definitely not.
01:56Only about like two or three of those girls.
01:57Yeah, but are you really friends with everyone in your friend group?
02:00Yes.
02:02Very much so.
02:03How do you know if you're in one or if you're not?
02:05I think it has to be branded on some sort of social media.
02:08With social media, we need to know what those cliques are, and it can be very hard to
02:11see that because we don't have a bird's eye view of a social network anymore.
02:15So if you sort of affirm who's in your squad, it's making really clear to everyone what
02:18that social structure is.
02:22So I am here with Remy Holwick, who is the organizer and leader of the New York chapter
02:27of a secret internet friendship club.
02:30So what exactly is this secret internet friendship club?
02:34We're a group of 2,800 women who exist online in a secret forum that you can't search and
02:38you can't find, and we're there to help each other be better and help each other get through
02:41the day.
02:42So how do you think that this group is similar and different to what people think about when
02:48they think of the squad?
02:49I think that we are a squad in every sense of the word, except that we're huge.
02:55And we are all constantly talking all day, every day, so that's all we are.
02:59We're a group of people with a really common goal, to kind of be better together and be
03:01there for each other.
03:02The term now is so much tied into social media and what you project.
03:06We care how we treat each other, we don't do the damn well we project.
03:10Yeah.
03:10If your squad is more about what people think of you and less about what your squad is
03:14from the inside, like what kind of squad goals are those?
03:18That's not squad at all.
03:20Yeah.
