Ethos e amicizia maschile in un contesto giovanile albanese metropolitano

Socio-anthropological studies observe the intimacy in various areas of life. This article focuses on young male friendship after an ethnographic and visual research authors carried out between 2018 and 2023 among a group of young men in Tirana. Here, friendship is a “discourse” the protagonists imagine and practice both in real life and in virtual life, namely on Facebook and on other virtual networks. It emerges that on the public screen of Facebook the interactions are functional in making new acquaintances. However, virtual friendship is less then face-to-face friendship, considered “true” and referred to “blood”. The meanings of “true friendship” reveal the Albanian traditional masculine friendship, his egalitarian ideals, his deep complicity, and solidarity over the time. Through the ethnographic and visual examination of local articulations of intimacy and the public dimension offered by Facebook, the authors note that, compared to the “face-to-face friendship”, the online friendship is freer but not strengthened by the opportunities enjoyed; therefore, online friendship is fragile. The patterns and constraints of male friendship still have a strong weight on male choices and traditional models: the informants give absolute priority to the emotional harmony of long-standing relationships which are interpreted, imagined, and cultivated as “brotherhood”.