It’s #NationalBestFriendDay, but you’ve got your high school best friends, camp best friends, college best friends, religious youth group best friends, childhood best friends and so on. So how do you choose who to make an Instagram for? In a perfect world all of our favorite people would be best friends with each other, and we would all bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone would eat it and be happy. But, that will never happen, and high schools should probably have better security so that crying girls with lots of feelings don’t voice them at assemblies that have nothing to do with them.

Within these divisions of best friends are different kinds of best friendships. A best friend is someone who you care more about than other people, a person who you want to make the effort to talk to and a person whose accomplishments are your accomplishments and whose downfalls are your downfalls. Through thick and thin and triumphs and hardships, you are always there for your best friend, not because you’re forced to be, but because you want to be. However, different levels of best friendship among your BFFs derive from many different factors. Sometimes it’s easier to hangout with your best friend who has a car than it is to hang out with your other best friend who you need to take public transportation to get to. Other times keeping in touch with your sorority sister or roommate is easier to do than to keep in touch with your best camp friend who goes to a different college and is preoccupied with her boyfriend.

Some people (like my mom) think that having more than a few best friends makes the title of “best friend” less special. Only a few people should be allowed that hierarchy in your life, because if everyone is considered a best friend then in actuality, no one is your best friend. That’s where the ranking of best friends really matters (BTW, this is an invisible list. Like, don’t go telling your friends how they rank on your best friend scale). With a ranking you can still call your childhood best friend who you rarely talk to anymore your best friend, because although she’s not a priority in the moment, she’s a priority in your heart (sometimes you have to be really cheesy to get your point across).

First Tier.

This type of best friend is someone who you talk to every day. They know what you ate for breakfast, who you did it with the night before, which positions you did it in and whether he made you orgasm or not. They know about your drama, your other friends’ drama, and what grades you’re getting in school. You probably have a few missed FaceTime calls from them, and you also probably have half of their wardrobe in your closet. Going a day without texting each other is a rarity, and usually you have telepathic texting abilities and end up messaging each other at the same exact time.

Second Tier.

Although they’re second on your list, they’re just as important to you as your first-tier best friends. You don’t talk to this BF as much as you’d like to, and they don’t know all the nitty gritty details of your life, but whenever you see them, you pick up just where you left off. Second tier best friends are usually the friends who don’t live in the same state as you. If circumstances were different, they could be a first tier best friend, but alas, they’re not. Every few weeks you text each other to catch up on all the missed gossip, and even though you vow to Skype and talk more often, you still fall back into the same routine of breaking those promises and missing each other.

Third Tier.

Bottom-tier best friends are loosely defined as the friends who know a lot about you, and who you know a lot about too, but could be considered as good friends rather than best friends. You always have a good time when you’re with these people, but you both have so many other friends that you don’t make each other a priority. Third-tier BFs still get elaborate birthday posts on social media but fluctuate between “recent” and “best friend” status on Snapchat. This tier usually includes camp friends who you live with for several months but never talk to during the year, except for occasional camp reunion or Snapchat.

Look out for the next installment: “How to Rank Your Good Friends, Friends, Acquaintances and Frenemies.”