HealthyGamerGG - Why You're The Least Valuable Friend

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Dr. K unpacks what it means to feel like “the goober” in your friend group. The person who gets invited, but it doesn’t really matter if you show up. Starting from a brutal birthday story where nobody came, he shows how overgiving, bribing people with effort, and constantly trying to be “worth inviting” actually keep you stuck on the edge of every group. Being on the periphery isn’t a diagnosis, but it can wreck your self-esteem and make you feel forgettable even when you technically have friends. He then breaks down the science of social networks and what actually moves you toward the center of a group. Instead of clinging to one friend circle and making yourself small with self-deprecating humor, he explains how to build more connections, become the “in between” person who links groups, and stop hiding your strengths. Dr. K gives both big-picture strategies and small behavior changes so you can be respected, remembered, and valued instead of feeling like the tagalong. Topics include: What it really means to feel like a “goober” in social groups Clinging behaviors that keep you stuck on the edge of friend circles Why overinvesting in one group rarely gets you more respect Eigenvector centrality and how “social gravity” actually works Forming weak ties and turning them into strong, meaningful connections Becoming the bridge between different groups to raise your status How self-deprecating humor and playing small lower your social value Why showing your real skills and expertise changes how people treat you HG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3Szt HG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at Redfin.com. Own the dream.

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast, smart move. Being financially savvy, smart move. Another smart move? Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan.

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. Hey, chat, welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Al-Ocanogia, but you can call me Dr. Kay. I'm a psychiatrist, gamer, and co-founder of Healthy Gamer.

On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. I was wrapping up treatment with a patient a few years ago, and I kind of asked them, is there anything else that you want to work on? And that's when they asked me, hey, Dr. Kay, can you help me stop being a good? goober. And I was like, what does that mean? Like, what do you mean by a goober? And so they sort of said, look, so I have this problem where I struggle like in social situations. So I have friends, but I'm not

like super important to my friends. I'm the kind of person who will get invited to, let's say, a party or a weekend trip or something like that. My friends invite me. But if I don't go, it's like not that big of a deal to them. It's something where like, I have friends, but they don't seem to care about me very much. I don't feel central to their lives. And I sort of think about them a lot. I initiate with them a lot, but they don't think about me quite as much. And sometimes when I'm in a group of people, I sort of feel like a goober. I feel like I don't really belong. I feel a little bit awkward and I don't kind of know what to do about it. And so I was asking this person, okay, so like when did this become a problem for you? Tell me a little bit more about this.

And that's when they told me, I think I sort of realized this when about a month ago, I had a birthday party. And I sort of invited all my friends and I said, hey, like, I'm going to put together this party. It's going to be great. I'm going to cook. They cooked for three days. They brined chicken 24 hours in advance. They made dessert. They made their own dips.

So they really planned this elaborate party. And then all their friends were like, yeah, we're absolutely coming, man. It's going to be great. It's going to be awesome. And then no one showed up. And so this person was like, I don't know what to do about this. And that's when we sort of dug into it, we started to realize like, okay, this person is engaging in a lot of behaviors to keep people close to them, including bribing them. And as we tunnel down, we found a pattern of behaviors that they would engage in.

Like, any time they wanted to be included, they would try extra hard to be like worth it to invite them, right? So if we're going on a weekend trip, I'm going to take care of this thing and increase my value to the group. subconsciously they were paranoid about being ejected from the group. They were right on the periphery of the group. And so they tried really hard to stay in the group. And so this is what's really interesting is I started working with them on this. And this wasn't quite psychiatry. Okay.

So the first thing that it is I tried to diagnose them with something. I was like, okay, do you have social anxiety? Are you on the spectrum? Is this a diagnosis? But it's not being a goober is not a diagnosis. It's not a pathology that needs to be treated. it is a part of yourself. It is sort of like a self-esteem issue.

It is a social connection issue. It is a social skills issue that you can actually improve. And these are the kinds of things that kind of led me down the road of coaching because I see that a lot of human beings are struggling with issues that aren't quite pathologies but cause them serious problems in life. And so as I worked with this person, we basically figured out how to solve this problem. So the basic issue is that there are a lot of behaviors that people, who are at the edges of groups

will engage in to avoid being ejected. Okay? So the way that this looks is like you try really hard to be included. That if you ruffle feathers, so they'll engage in behaviors like self-deprecating humor, they won't try to outshine

the central people in the group, right? So you appear to be non-threatening, and you always want to be included. So I call these kind of clinging behaviors where you're trying to cling to, cling onto the social group because you don't want to get ejected. But the problem is that the more you engage in clinging behaviors,

that's very different from like climbing, right? So your respect in a social group is never going to increase as long as you are trying hard to not get ejected. Those are two very different things. And this is what's really fascinating is there's actually a ton of science behind this that is not from the psychiatry research, but from the research on social. social networking. And there is something called eigenvector centrality. I don't know if that's actually

what it's called, but the eigenvector. You will use the eigenvector. I like that word so much if you guys can't tell. So we're going to explain to y'all what eigenvector centrality is, as well as sort of share with y'all macro things that you can do to be more important and be more valued in the group, as well as microsocial behaviors that will prevent you from like lowering your status in the group. So let's start with the macro stuff. So if we look at diagrams of human connections, what we tend to find is that there are some people that are more central and some people that are more peripheral. So you may notice that there are leaders in your group that like when they say like they're

the ones that maybe organize events, they're also the ones that like, you know, if they don't show up to a party, it's a party not worth going to kind of thing. And when they have a party, everyone wants to show up, right? So there are some people who are like socially respected and everyone really wants to be friends with them, except sometimes they're a little bit of assholes and we don't really like them very much, right? But there are absolutely social groups where there's some people in the center and some people at the edge. So how do you become more central to a group of people? So there's a number of things that you can do. The first is to increase the total number of connections that you have. So oftentimes when I work with my patients or coaching

clients, where they're struggling to be like socially powerful, respected, loved, even reciprocity. Oftentimes they're just looking for basic like reciprocity where like, if I get you a birthday gift, are you going to get me a birthday gift? The first thing that we can focus on is increasing the number of social connections. So oftentimes what these people will do is they over invest in getting a particular group of people to like them or respect them more. Whereas that's like sort of barking up the wrong tree. It's not that it isn't possible and will actually show you how to become more respected in your current group, but it actually starts with forming weak connections with external groups. So this will affect your own sense of self-esteem, which will become really important in the second,

which we'll talk about. But the first thing that you can do is form weak connections with a lot of other people. Now, this is where a lot of people will be like, well, weak connections are kind of what I have here, right? So I already have peripheral connections that are not deep and meaningful and I'm not well respected. So what is the point of forming these weak connections? Those people aren't going to respect me. They're not going to call me when I'm having a bad day. But that's the first step. You have to form weak connections, okay? Second thing is the way that we convert weak connections into strong connections. And the more strong connections you have, the more central and respected you will be. So weak connections get converted to strong connections through repeated interactions.

Okay. So this is also what's really important when we have a group of peripheral people. If you start hanging out with them specifically, like the people at the edge of the group one-on-one or maybe in small groups of twos or threes, that will actually strengthen your connection to those people and increase the amount of respect that you get from the people around you. The third principle that we're going to lean into is called in-betweenness. So the more in-between you are for different people, the more your social respect will go up. Relationships have never been easy. Anytime you interact with someone, you're dealing with their unique soup of emotions,

expectations, and even traumatic baggage. And the fact that we're all texting now and dating apps are a thing is not making. making things easier. That's why we developed a coaching program to help our community with modern relationship problems. Working with a coach can help you build skills like setting boundaries, communicating effectively, and navigating conflict. So if y'all are struggling with your relationships, check out the link in the description below. So the issue with this sort of eigenvector centrality problem is if there's like one center person in the group and you are at the periphery, part of that person's respect comes from their connections to everyone.

everybody else. So we value socially the people who other people are connected to. This is the essence of networking. So I think that, you know, sometimes people will try to network with me. And I think networking is great. I like networking, but I think there's a huge mistake that people make in networking. Which is that when you go to these networking events, a lot of the people there are looking to get ahead. They're like, how can I meet this person to help me? How can this person help me? Can this person help me? I want to talk to this person because I want to get a job. So a lot of networking is about people who are selfish. The most useful networking that I have found is actually to be a connection between two other people, right? So it's like, oh, you're looking for an AI

engineer. You're someone who recently graduated. I don't have to be involved in this. Why don't I connect the two of you? And every time you make a connection between two people, you elevate your own status in their mind because you're not asking for anything. You're not getting anything. You're genuinely trying to help people out. So when I network with people, and I'm not, even trying to do this. This is something that I kind of stumbled on. I just try to get to know people and I try to understand what they do. And if there's a meaningful connection that can be made, I go ahead and make it. And I appreciate when other people do that for me as well. So the key thing here is that we have a lot of research that shows that in-betweenness is huge for being central.

This is something that y'all may have seen in sort of like the new kid phenomenon, right? So I remember when I was at school, sometimes we'd like transfer, we get transfer students or I even transferred schools. And so in your existing school, you have this social network, right, where there's like people at the periphery, people at the center. And when a new kid shows up, sometimes what would happen is the new kid would get ostracized pretty quick and they get kicked to the periphery. Or sometimes what happened is they're like, the new kid is the cool kid. And the existing social structure would wrap around them. And why is that? Is it novelty? That's a piece of it. But a major element of why the new kid is the cool kid is,

because the new kid became a connection to the old school, right? So this person sits between these two groups of people, which drastically increases their social respect. So that's why what we want to do when we form weak connections is we want to start connecting people from different places. So what I would recommend is don't throw a party where you work extra hard to try to get people to come, have a small event where you invite person from group A and you invite person from group B. This is something that I encounter all the time on Discord when I'm gaming, right? So I have a friend. My friend invites me to another Discord. So the two of us show up and this friend is like, hey, I've got a buddy. He plays a great support. Is it okay if I invite him? And those people

will say yes. And so both of us end up coming together. Now we have three people in the Discord server. I've never met this other person. This person has never met me. But there's one person. in the middle. And so that's the person that really connects us. That's the person that's the glue. That's where the social respect comes from. So if we look at peripheral connections, repeated interactions, and in between this, these are the three things that will lead to more respect. So what does this look like practically? Try to meet new people. And most importantly, try to organize an event with a small number of people that are not part of an existing social circle to form your own social circle. Okay. Then we get to the four thing, which will transition to the micro, which is the fourth thing is that oftentimes people who are

peripheral in a social group engage in non-respect gaining behaviors. So this is where we get back to this idea of clinging versus climbing. So oftentimes what I see in the people that I work with is that they're afraid of the central people. So they'll engage in a couple of behaviors. The first thing that they'll do is self-deprecating humor, right? Because other people are laughing at me. I'm not that so if I laugh along or if I make jokes at myself, I will feel non-threatening to the central people. I will get them to like me more if I make myself small. The second thing that they do to be non-threatening is they tend to downplay their expertise. So if it turns out that I'm better than you, and y'all may have seen this on Discord as well,

where there's one alpha in the Discord server, who is the highest ranked player, who is sort of the top dog in a server, and there are people that are kind of underneath them, right? So there's this sort of power structure that emerges where expertise moves you to the top. Now, oftentimes when I work with people who are a little bit gooberish, they are afraid of feeling threatening because if I demonstrate my expertise and I am threatening,

I will get ejected from the group. So instead, what I'm going to do is make myself small and not dangerous. That's a clinging behavior. The clinging behavior will keep you stuck at the periphery because that's exactly what it's designed to do, right? I want to stay right here. Don't kick me out. The interesting thing is if you're doing something to stay right here,

you're not going to move further in either. So this is where there are two really, really important things that I would highly recommend. The first is from a microscopic perspective, stop making fun of yourself. No more self-deprecating behavior. It will keep you stuck at the periphery. Second thing is if you're good at something,

fucking show it. And if people do not value that, if people feel threatened by that, that is their problem. And this is where that may seem really scary, but there's a really important reason for that. So there's a paper in 2024 that basically showed the way that you feel about yourself, your belief in your own self-afficacy

dictates how other people will respond to you. So if you make yourself small, other people will treat you as small. So as you demonstrate that expertise, your respect will rise in the circles around you. Now, here's the really important thing. Normally, the reason that people don't do that is because the central people do feel threatened, and that's okay, right? Because remember, you're in between these other social circles.

So as you demonstrate this expertise, which, by the way, which is what the central person in your social circle does, right? They demonstrate a lot of expertise. So as you start to demonstrate expertise, your belief in yourself increases. the respect from the people around you increases, and if you're connected to other people, and that's why it's kind of important to do it in that sequence, then your eigenvector centrality will be optimized,

and you will no longer be a goober. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoy the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other. This episode is brought to you by CarMax. Want to buy a car the easy way? Start at CarMax.

Want to browse with confidence? Get pre-qualified with no impact on your credit score and shop within your budget. From luxury to family rides, CarMax has options for almost every price range, including over 25,000 cars under $25,000. Want to get started? Head to CarMax.com for details

and get pre-qualified today. Want to drive? CarMax. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we're fit for your ambitions. whatever shape they may take. Whether you're planning for today or tomorrow, we've got the flexibility and know-how to help you reach your goals.

Because we're built for what you're building. First Citizens Bank, fit for your ambition. Learn more at firstcitizens.com slash ambition.