Ask HN: How do you meet new people?
Outside of school/work/neighborhood, how do you meet new people?
Many people I've met who had so much in common with me and totally clicked never became friends because we didn't have the time to meet over and over.
I spent a good amount of time researching how to make friends before I moved to a new city in 2010.
Would be happy to share what I've learned if anyone is interested.
"As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other, said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro."
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-...
I didn't want to be sitting in an apartment by myself all the time so I did a lot of research on how to make friends before moving.
I found the study from my previous post was a good start. I decided I needed to be in area of the city where a lot of people my age with similar backgrounds lived based on the proximity factor.
I also decided I needed roommates based on all three factors. I ended up moving into an apartment with two roommates who seemed nice when I met them.
After living together three months, my roommates and I were consistently hanging out inside the apartment and doing activities outside the apartment.
After six months, I would say we were friends.
I became friends with another person my age down the hall from our apartment. I happened to see him go into his apartment a couple of times previously. I knocked on his door and introduced myself. Fortunately, we had similar interests, hung out again and again, and became friends over time.
I repeated that with another person across the hall who one of my roommates had already become friends with. I also ended up meeting my fiancée on the elevator in my apartment after I mentioned the weather to her.
From my two roommates, the two people living in apartments nearby, my new girlfriend at the time, along with a person I met at my work orientation who lived nearby, I was introduced to probably over a hundred other people. Some of whom I became friends with. And I'm excluding other friends I made at work, through activities, and social gatherings etc.
By 2017, when I left the city, I had a close circle of maybe ten good friends, and an extended circle of thirty friends. It ended up working out well.
From the research I did and my own personal experience, I don't completely agree with the rest of the advice from the comments. I've seen similar comments on other forums before.
If there is more interest in what I've learned, I can continue. Any specific or personal questions, please email me (in profile).
I could've gotten my own apartment and met people who lived in my apartment building on my own. I decided to get roommates as a way of meeting people and because the city I moved to was expensive.
I agree that roommates can be a huge gamble. I met these people and thought they were nice from a first impression. It turned out to be right. I could've easily been wrong also. It's a gamble that might be necessary for some people to take if you're young, single, don't know anyone, and moving to a new area.
Meetups sound good on the surface. You can meet new people. That I agree. My question is how easily can you see them again. People you meet there can live quite a distance from your home. This makes it hard to see them again.
If you happen to run into someone who lives within walking distance from you and you happen to get along, then I think it's great. Later you can meet up with them without much planning. But if the person lives further away, then it doesn't make it easy to become good friends.
If there was a meetup based on proximity, then I think it would be great. For example, a meetup for all the new people who moved to X neighborhood of Y city. Then you could be assured that the people you meet are nearby and you can easily see them again.
Meetups where you do activities (card games, video games, etc.) can be good because people will repeatedly come back for those activities. Again, how easy will it be for you to hang out with them outside of the meetup?
"I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me." - to me, that doesn't sound like religious rules, but a recipe for solving loneliness, treating depression, and making the world a better place.
Seeking friendship is hard, it's something forged with time - like any relationship. You have to be willing to put in the effort of being a positive impression on peoples lives, without the expectation of friendship out of it.
This is a big fallacy.
Don't try to make it seem coincidental, instead make a real effort. Here 3 steps on how it works
1. Go to meetups, try out lots of new hobbies, connect with everyone on facebook immediately if you click. Do it with guys and girls. Some will be awkward, but most don't care and just say sure and connect.
2. Then keep the conversation alive a bit and meet up with them around the activity or meet up you met, ask who is going to the next meet up, be it hiking, exchanging info about cryptocurrencies, ruby on rails or whatever. You can also make chat groups on messenger with 10 people or so
3. Be a value giver, be an organizer, be the one who knows what's going on, people gravitate to people like that.
4. Doing this is not needy as long as you are a value giver. However, don't ask people all them time for value, don't be a value drawer too often.
5. Keep it lighthearted, don't become pissed if people don't join your meet up or son't reply. This is needy behaviour. After a few months, you should have 100 people in your new social circle, so what do you care if one doesn't come
As you can see this takes effort, but this is a recipe of how you can build a vibrant social circle for you within a few months time every time you come to a new city.
Most people don't do that, because they are so scared of rejection. But what do you care if 20 people don't want to connect with you when a 100 do. There are always people who want to stay for themselves, are weird or asocial.
In my experience, people are nicer to you than you think, especially if your interests are aligned.
I should point out that meeting people was not my motivation for getting a dog though.
Who do you find in gatherings where people have gotten together to escape reality in one form or the other?
I'd rather meet people that have similar (and what I consider positive and realistic) goals and outlooks or not meet at all.
I'm not bashing religion (or alcohol) either. I'm entirely ok with both in moderation but I won't be a regular at places either is the central focus because it attracts people who are not what I'm looking for.
Before, I used to live in DC and was obsessed with golf. I'd go down to a nearby public golf course at first light. Often I'd join a foursome of total strangers, I've met all sorts, lawyers, a local news presenter and even someone relatively high up at NASA.
I realized that the theme for me was to simply pursue what you love, commit some time to it. This leads naturally to meeting people with a common interest.
Tinder for plain ol’ friends you are not trying to date or sell something to, but might have things in common with?
The one thing that messes it up for me is a few people I have known a long time who turned out to be lifelong best friends yet I have almost nothing in common with them. It’d be tough to have matching criteria for that, then again it also sounds like something tailor-made for machine learning if you could get the right data into the system.
I help moderate a local subreddit dedicated to local meetups, and I see this a lot - people are looking for best friends, and I think this is a mistake for two reasons:
1. You don't need all the people you regularly socialize with to be best friends. It's okay to have people you see often with whom you're not super-intimately connected. Not everyone has to be a platonic spouse. You ought to have a range of good friends, acquaintances, buddies, regulars-you-only-see-at-this-one-bar, etc. Seeking deep relations exclusively is a mistake, partially because...
2. ... you can't really farm out "find me a best friend" to an algorithm. As you mention, your best friends might be people who you appear to have nothing in common with, so you already know this.
People say that dating is a numbers game, but it's easier to filter out potential dates than it is potential best friends. (For one, most people can easily eliminate ~50% of the populate from the pool.) There are obvious dealbreakers, but really it's just a matter of meeting people and seeing how your personalities mesh, how your conversations go, and how you both feel after awhile.
Could you elaborate on this, please?
If you approach every potential friendship with your sights set on making a best friend for life, you'll inevitably be disappointed, repeatedly - because not every pair of people can strike up a relationship like that.
Those relationships also take a fair amount of work and energy - they have to be maintained, and sometimes you don't actually need to put in that much work to get what you want out of a friendship. Sometimes you just need someone to shoot the shit with, and it's perfectly fine to do that with someone who's just a casual acquataince.
Sorry if that doesn't make sense, I'm really tired todya.
When I was first on IH, I proposed having a meetup in NYC, and a bunch of us made it happen. Perl programmers have had perlmonger groups that would get together for years as would computer hobbyists.
Get 20 people in a room doing a 10 week Wednesday night Swedish class and discover over a beer afterwards that one or more of your classmates has a common interest.
If you're moving to Stockholm you should get in touch, my email is in my profile :)
Either way I really hope you'll enjoy Sweden and find good friends here.
- Attend it's meetup or any activity.
- Become a volunteer for any community related with your interest also helps meeting new people that has a same interest just like you.
But it is a good starting point!
> Bars
> Online gaming
> Through existing friends
I think you need to do activities that require closeness for longish periods of time and some level of intimacy. Language exchange fits this bill very well.