Okay, so - I largely enjoyed the whole internet dunking on that "thanks for getting in touch but afraid I'm at capacity" self-care text, but kind of felt that there was maybe something to it, and it's been knocking around my brain for a few days and I have some thoughts:

Social media has entirely changed friendships, especially for people who are very online.

1) People are now able to have more friends than they usually would, because it's easier to create networks online, and harder to lose touch with people than it used to be.

2) People are now able to have more numerous and deeper friendships than they used to; if you didn't see someone that often, it'd be easy for that person to go back to being a more casual acquaintance, to whom you wouldn't necessarily go if you needed someone to talk to.

3) Pre-internet, friendships had ready-made boundaries, due to time and space constraints; if a friend got in touch to ask for a chat, you could say eg "well I'm busy tonight and tomorrow but let's get a drink on Thursday", or "I'm out of town right now but let's talk next week".

Telling someone you physically couldn't see them for a few days was normal; we're all busy, can't drop everything to go to the pub, etc.

The internet has changed that; if someone comes to you for a chat, you can't exactly say "Hey! Please WhatsApp me again on Sunday".

4) The internet has changed the way we talk to one another; it's much easier to pour your heart out to someone you don't know extremely well by typing out your feelings, in a way that would perhaps feel uncomfortable in person.

So what we're left with is people who have more friends than they should be able to handle, and they have a deeper connection with those friends than they normally should have, and there are no time or space constraints shaping those friendships.

These are all good things overall, I think, but it means it can be really hard for people to establish boundaries, and prevent themselves from burning out by trying to be all things to all people at all times, and we haven't developed a language around that issue yet.

So while that "I'm at capacity" post was very cringe, and the idea of having a ready-made message to copy and paste feels jarring, I think that person had a decent point - we need to relearn how to shape our online friendships without losing ourselves in them.