What I’m trying to show by way of this conjecture is that, while modern communications technologies tend to make the space of even friendly disagreement feel more narrow and thus also more uncomfortable, hanging out is actually about the opposite. Hanging out, which involves killing time in the presence of others, is about carving out a space that is big enough to accommodate these kinds of relational fluctuations, allowing them to stretch and unfurl as necessary. It’s a way of announcing up front that it doesn’t always have to be good, that we don’t always have to catch a person on a good day in order to care about or honor our connection to them. Hanging out means marking out a space that is big enough to house both the camaraderie that gets built in the moment along with mistakes, attitudinal spikes, and second chances.