I think I discovered something I don't do very well with acquaintances/weak friends--especially if it's a close friend of someone that I'm close with (e.g. my friend's partner): I assume we're getting along well enough to tease them or share my opinions quite directly (like my opinions about animal agriculture, for example).

Close friends can tease each other, and when they do, it's even a sign of their closeness and level of trust. As it turns out, this isn't transitive as early on as I (apparently) felt it was, at least based on a couple experiences. Vouching for someone is a thing, but mostly in certain contexts and with certain relationships, and my matrix of those combos might be quite different than average.

Have others experienced this?

I can think of a few reasons this might be the case for me specifically, but then I also thought about the couple of examples I had in mind, and in both cases the friend-of-my-friend was someone outside of my main community of rats/EAs, so maybe that's part of it, too. 🤷‍♀️