How Loyal a Friend Are You, Honestly?
Seven brutal scenarios decide whether you're sunshine company or certified ride-or-die material.
Every friendship comes with fine print, and most of us signed without reading ours. In theory you would answer a 3am call without hesitation, but theory has never been woken up by a ringtone on a work night, and theory has never helped anyone carry a couch.
These seven scenarios test the whole loyalty obstacle course: secrets, airport runs, moving day, absent-friend defense. See where you land, from cheerful fair-weather company to full ride-or-die. No tier is a crime — the results may simply explain a few of your group chats.
Read every possible result and what it means →
Inspect the scoring, question by question
The highest possible score here is 21. The original game divides scores into 4 bands; the bands contain different numbers of answer combinations. A high point total is not a measured percentile.
1. A friend texts 'can you talk?' at 3am. What actually happens?
- I reply at 7am with real concern and a sincere apology — 1 original points
- Answered before the second buzz, kettle already warming — 3 original points
- Do Not Disturb exists for a reason, and the reason is me — 0 original points
- I surface groggily and call back within the hour — 2 original points
These are the archived game’s option weights. Partial credit is a game rule, not a clinical or population measurement.
2. Someone hands you a juicy secret about your best friend. You…
- A secret that good has a shelf life of exactly one lunch — 0 original points
- Lock it away and steer the conversation somewhere else entirely — 3 original points
- Tell just one person, which I have decided doesn't count — 1 original points
- Sit on it, though holding it visibly costs me something — 2 original points
These are the archived game’s option weights. Partial credit is a game rule, not a clinical or population measurement.
3. Your friend is moving apartments on the one sunny Saturday this month.
- I arrive early with gloves, tape, and morale snacks — 3 original points
- Count me in for the afternoon shift and the heavy couch — 2 original points
- I develop a mysterious back condition that resolves by Sunday — 0 original points
- Encouraging texts all day, plus an offer to help unpack sometime — 1 original points
These are the archived game’s option weights. Partial credit is a game rule, not a clinical or population measurement.
4. Somebody trash-talks your friend at a party while they're absent. Your move?
- Say 'that hasn't been my experience' and hold eye contact — 2 original points
- Stay quiet, then report the whole scene to my friend later — 1 original points
- Calmly dismantle the take until the room changes weather — 3 original points
- Nod along, because parties run on agreement — 0 original points
These are the archived game’s option weights. Partial credit is a game rule, not a clinical or population measurement.
5. Would you do a 5am airport drop-off?
- I recommend a rideshare with the warmth of a travel agent — 0 original points
- Yes, although the entire car will hear about the hour — 2 original points
- Car fueled the night before, departure playlist queued — 3 original points
- Once a year, and this trip spends the token — 1 original points
These are the archived game’s option weights. Partial credit is a game rule, not a clinical or population measurement.
6. How closely do you track the small stuff in your friends' lives?
- Big names and most of the plot, yes — 2 original points
- Their coworker feuds have seasons, and I follow every arc — 3 original points
- I once asked about a job they'd left in spring — 0 original points
- Faces yes, details fuzzy, enthusiasm completely genuine — 1 original points
These are the archived game’s option weights. Partial credit is a game rule, not a clinical or population measurement.
7. A friend going through something cancels plans three times in a row.
- Soup lands on their doorstep with no repayment expected — 3 original points
- Space is given while I wait for them to resurface — 1 original points
- The fourth invitation goes to somebody with better attendance — 0 original points
- Invites keep coming, kept light, with zero scorekeeping — 2 original points
These are the archived game’s option weights. Partial credit is a game rule, not a clinical or population measurement.
What happens across every possible answer pattern?
We counted all 16,384 patterns, treating each offered choice as equally likely. This is a synthetic rule check, not visitor research. It does not describe how real people answer.
| Result | Patterns | Share of patterns |
|---|---|---|
| The Sunshine Friend | 323 | 1.97% |
| The Steady Regular | 7,869 | 48.03% |
| The First Phone Call | 7,456 | 45.51% |
| The Ride-or-Die | 736 | 4.49% |
Download the full counts · Download Python script · Download rule inputs
To reproduce locally: python3 measure_legacy.py --input legacy-rule-inputs.json --output counts.json. Uses Python 3 and its standard library.
Loyalty is mostly logistics
The word promises something grand and rare: an oath, a sacrifice, a stand taken at personal cost. In practice friendship is held together by unglamorous availability. The lift to the airport at an indefensible hour. The third rescheduled coffee, rescheduled again without comment. The message on the anniversary of something bad that nobody else remembered. Grand gestures photograph well; ordinary attendance is what people actually count.
Closeness has an exchange rate, and it is hours
Jeffrey Hall put numbers on this in 2019, studying adults who had recently moved city alongside students in their first weeks at university. Shifting somebody from acquaintance to casual friend took roughly fifty hours of time together. Reaching plain friend took about ninety. Reaching the close, ring-them-at-3am tier took over two hundred.
The type of hours mattered as much as the count. Time spent side by side on obligations counted for far less than time spent messing about with no agenda, which is why colleagues can share a decade of desks without ever crossing the line, while a fortnight in a shared kitchen produces somebody you would help carry a sofa.
The stakes are higher than sentiment
In 2010 Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy Smith and Bradley Layton pooled 148 studies covering more than 300,000 people followed for an average of seven and a half years. Those with stronger social relationships showed roughly a fifty per cent greater likelihood of surviving the follow-up period, an effect comparable in size to risk factors that attract vastly more public alarm.
It is correlational, naturally, and healthy people find it easier to keep company in the first place. Even so, the 5am lift and the fourth attempt at a coffee are not merely good manners. They are maintenance on something that appears to matter about as much as the habits we get lectured about.
What seven questions can honestly tell you
Not much about your character, and nothing whatsoever about whether your friends consider you loyal, since that verdict is theirs to hold. What a scenario quiz does well is force a quick and slightly unflattering comparison between the answer you would give out loud and the answer your last six months already gave on your behalf. If a tier stings, the remedy is not a better score. It is one message to somebody you have been meaning to ring.
Reading context & limits
For background and a fuller source trail, read How Friendship Actually Works. These references provide context; they do not validate the entertainment result or every historical detail in the archived essay.
- Lindenfors, Wartel & Lind, 'Dunbar's number deconstructed' — Biology Letters
- Dunbar, 'Structure and function in human and primate social networks' — Proceedings of the Royal Society A
Content lead: LISA. Updated October 25, 2026. Send a specific factual correction.