Yeah, for a lot of people finding good friends is always a life-changing event no matter the outer circumstances surrounding that bonding.
The interesting part of the discussion though is how often those bonds are misattributed to causation from the concomitant circumstances (violence, special secretive clubs) as opposed to correlation and just raw, "boring" proximity. The general loss of consistent "third places" to encourage proximity among potential friends somewhat makes it seem even more "causitive" that people (especially those socialized under today's idea of masculinity) misattribute the wonder of forming a new friend bond to "requiring" ugly circumstances such as shared violence or special secretive clubs, rather than just being a healthy and natural outcome of social proximity (and emotional "closeness") among our aggressively social species that doesn't need to be forced through pain or sweat or hazing or forced philanthropy or secret handshakes.
The interesting part of the discussion though is how often those bonds are misattributed to causation from the concomitant circumstances (violence, special secretive clubs) as opposed to correlation and just raw, "boring" proximity. The general loss of consistent "third places" to encourage proximity among potential friends somewhat makes it seem even more "causitive" that people (especially those socialized under today's idea of masculinity) misattribute the wonder of forming a new friend bond to "requiring" ugly circumstances such as shared violence or special secretive clubs, rather than just being a healthy and natural outcome of social proximity (and emotional "closeness") among our aggressively social species that doesn't need to be forced through pain or sweat or hazing or forced philanthropy or secret handshakes.