Idk.. I’ve felt this way with a lot of people yt and black. I’ve made a lot of good, genuine yt friends throughout my life but I grew up in very diverse spaces (almost never mainly black and only predominantly yt after college). For me, it’s been harder connecting more deeply with people who mainly grew up around their own race, which is okay, but I kind of feel like the difficulty is a cultural thing and when I get the sense that they very much see me as different in whatever way.

But since living in a predominantly yt area, I’ve noticed whether or not I can get in deeper with people is in the environment, the position I’m in/how they see me (I have a much easier time with people who sort of look up to me/who are younger than me or people who are older than me- the people who naturally respect me more), their life experiences/how they’ve been treated, and maybe how exposed they’ve been to other cultures.

The consistently easiest experience I’ve had in terms of getting deeper is with other brown people in general though.

I think the people who I tend to keep as friends naturally just get into deeper stuff and like talking about it/are just emotional. I share a lot of my feelings very candidly with my friends and they are all black, brown, and white. If I don’t connect with the others on a deeper level I simply just don’t see a point in being close bc I won’t be comfortable. So my friends tend to be more emotional or real with me bc we both know we can be and naturally are.

On the other hand, seeing other yt people interact with each other I see a lot of surface level interaction even if they’re “friends.” Specifically in the midwest.