Social Penetration Theory

A theory is a map somebody drew after walking the terrain. Social Penetration Theory is a useful map, provided you remember it is not the terrain.

The theory's gift is vocabulary. Once you have the word, you can see the thing — in your office, in your family, in the news. Before the word, it was only a vague discomfort after dinner.

Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.

Watch how a rumour travels in a hostel: it gains one detail per room and loses one truth per floor. By the fourth floor it is unrecognisable, and by dinner it is fact.

Society is a long conversation; the only question is whether you are listening or merely waiting to speak. The name is new; the wisdom stood at bus stops long before either of us.