A new study by Some Scientists shows that, more often than not, people by themselves are losers. Eight out of ten people surveyed said on a scale of one to ten, people they are friends with are people they had always known. “We’ve been friends since like forever,” said 25-year-old Ferdinand, of West End. “Yeah, we have like inside jokes and shit. This one time, Boris and I were socialising together on a community lot when he said this really funny thing. Now sometimes we just look at each other and laugh because we remember it at exactly the same time as one another.”

One group of perfectly normal youths with matching haircuts in a bar recalled a time when somebody who they didn’t already know walked in. “At first it was okay. I just assumed her friends were coming in behind her,” recalled Darren, 24. “I didn’t realise she was really there by herself. We made sure to stare her down, after we realised.”
His uni friend, Sarah, was also concerned. “I had heard of these losers before. I mean, there was this one guy in my science class in high school. He didn’t have any friends so I made sure to never talk to him to avoid confusing things. I think that experience helped me cope better with that weirdo in the bar.”

The study also shows that people may band together as a way of avoiding people they don’t already know. One person with a fringe explained the importance of tribal consistency. “We make sure that we exclusively stand with people who also have this hairstyle. It’s a very cool hairstyle, it’s in magazines at the moment. If we stand in packs like this, people who don’t know anybody here will be afraid to talk to us and may be encouraged to go home and stare at one of their walls.”