The paperclip theory: a guide to making friends
I always carry a paperclip with me in a back-left jean pocket or attached to my keys, and I am always offering it. I throw a compliment to the well-dressed girl in class or a “good luck” before an exam, but they don’t always catch it. The key to true socialite standing is knowing how to collect the missed pass and prepare for the next opportunity.
In the early 2000s, 26-year-old Kyle McDonald decided he wanted to live in a house, and resolved to get it: with nothing but one red paperclip. Over the course of a year and about fourteen well-chosen trades, McDonald was offered a two-story house. Mcdonald’s first trade was a paperclip for a fish pen, his sixth a keg and beer sign for a Bombardier snowmobile, and his fourteenth a movie-role for a house. After this resounding success, he founded a company to encourage others to pursue their dreams through non-traditional means.
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Now, not everyone has the energy (or tolerance for rejection) to attempt the feat McDonald achieves, but nevertheless, everyone could benefit from his idea. Just as trading a paperclip all the way to a house is ambitious, time-consuming, and wholly reliant on the trader’s effort output, making friends takes patience and a risk-reward mindset.
If you want a new friend, you have to offer your paperclip, despite the possibility of rejection. After all, the difference between knowing someone and being their friend is one good trade. But, like anything, it takes practice.
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A paperclip can’t offer anything if it sits in a pocket, unused. It is only when a person is brave enough to ask another to trade that they have any opportunity to improve their life. Going about life, I see the faces of those who might become friends, people I don’t know yet. But in truth, as often as I receive a quick smile, I am faced with a dirty look or worse, silence. But despite this continuous cycle of uncertainty, I always ask their name.
Image Courtesy: Pinterest
In making friends, you have to trade up. The first few – a smile, a chivalrous act, a brief conversation – are small trades, something easy to achieve and low risk. Trading up to a house, though, requires a step outside the easy moves. It becomes necessary to make that first big step: ask a classmate to hangout. Just as McDonald had to use strategy and patience to reach his goal, a potential friend needs to make big moves.
It doesn’t always seem unusual to ask a new friend to hang out, but it can be daunting regardless. But one thing Mcdonald knows is that if you’re willing to make big trades, you’ll always have a warm house to come home to. You’d be surprised who's willing to trade.
Strike out,
Writer: Rachel Mish
Editor: Naina Chauhan
Rachel Mish is a writer for Strike Magazine Gainesville, formal advocator for Die Hard as a Christmas movie, and collector of glass bottles she claims she will use as vases (and doesn’t). She can be found sweating on a Student Rec basketball court or using the last of her meal swipes at Broward Tent. Forward all inquiries to Rachel._.mish on Instagram, or Rachel.mish@yahoo.com (email).
