Are your friends happy? What about their friends? These people, new research suggests, will have a profound impact on your own personal satisfaction... happiness - and misery too - spread through social networks, affecting people through three degrees of separation. For instance, a happy 'friend of a friend of a friend' increases the chances of personal happiness by about 6% (Compare that to research showing that a $5000 income bump ups the odds by just 2%.... that each happy contact increases a person's odds of happiness by an average of 9%, while an unhappy contact decreases those odds by 7%.
IOW 'No man is an island.. but part of a vast continent of being'.
Anyway, I think whinging and complaining are good social bonding activities, but perhaps we need to make it clear we aren't really desperately sad, just enjoyably aggrieved.