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Comment by nuclearsugar | Hacker News Reader

These days I must make a real effort to be social on a regular basis. Personally I've found satisfaction in going to meetups to find like minds. I also go with my gut and in the moment ask to swap Instagram usernames with interesting people and promptly schedule with them to get coffee. If they prove to be as interesting and kind as I had sensed, then I invite them to a potluck dinner party which I throw every other month. In this way, I invite people under my umbrella, keep them in my life by regularly seeing them, slowly build a friendship, and hopefully they make friends with the regulars at dinner party. I must continually remind myself that I am the instigator and it's feels quite strange as a heavily introverted person. I don't particularly enjoy being the instigator for most social occasions but the pros outweigh the cons.

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> I must continually remind myself that I am the instigator and it's feels quite strange as a heavily introverted person. I don't particularly enjoy being the instigator

Once I figured out that this was a skill and not just something people that are not me are born with, it made things a lot easier. Went from making up all kinds of stories in my head about myself and others to thinking about each interaction as practice and realized lot more people were like me, thinking I'll be invited somewhere or talked to if I was liked or was interesting enough; waiting for someone else to do the inviting or talking first. I just remind myself that a lot of others also want to be invited or talked to, and that reminder greatly reduced my fear of rejection.

Indeed I've had a similar realization and it's a very helpful reminder. Also every time I go to a meetup, I remind myself: to be interesting, you must be interested.

> to be interesting, you must be interested.

I think thats the crux of it, most people respond positively when others are interested in them. As long as its genuine, asking about, or be interested in, others goes a really long way.

It helps to know a thing or two, about a wide range of topics, for this reason.

Take for instance someone telling you about their career. "I'm a software developer".

You can express interest with a response like "Oh, thats cool, what made you go into that line of work?" but thats a very generic, shallow response.

If you know a thing or two about software, for example, you can ask more interesting questions that show your interest in them, and your knowledge of the space. "Woh cool, how is AI coding impacting your life?"

Suddenly, it seems like you're much more interesting yourself, AND you're interested in them.

The tricky part nowadays is everyone has very niche interests. It's harder than ever to really have a breadth of knowledge that is broadly applicable. This was easier before the internet, before travel, before telecommunication. When your community was your community and news traveled slowly, it was a lot easier to learn about what impacted others.

I love being asked "what made you go into that line of work?" because I can answer with "mostly the money" (which is a very honest answer yet socially somewhat inappropriate), and their reaction to my answer immediately gives me a signal into whether we're going to be close or not.

Some people act so shocked when you tell them you did something because it would make you richer and not because an angel came to you in a dream and whispered in your ear to save the disenfranchised underclass (and all the cats) by writing code, or whatever's the current faux na pas reason to pursue a vocation these days.

I think the reason they act that way is because you're signaling to them that you dislike your job. Which is fine, but ideally you'd find some gratification in it that isn't just monetary, since it's what you spend most of your time doing. Money can only compensate so much for a shitty job.

It’s considered socially crass to just care about money in life (see: Ebenezer Scrooge), but everyone does a job for money - very few jobs are actually altruistic. There are many jobs that few would do if not for the high income (eg Lawyer) or is just difficult or boring. It’s a given that the income is a motivator in a high earning job.

Answering why you picked this particular path to high income is more interesting of an answer to the person asking and carries the conversation. Did your parents do it, did you have a professor that captured your attention, did you just google “easiest job to make a lot of money?” and pick the first one?

Someone asking wants to understand how and why you make decisions. What motives you. Etc. It’s the XY problem and from the other person’s perspective, you’re answering the wrong one.

> Someone asking wants to understand how and why you make decisions. What motives you

This is too simplistic. Someone might ask that for a million reasons. Also, you will be judged not only by your answer. Being so direct might show you are not on autopilot in the conversation, your humour or that you only care about money, depending on a lot of other factors. It might make one more memorable as well. I personally would read it as light humour, unless it is accompanied by a dead eyes stare.

One of the best signals I found for whether I will enjoy my conversation with someone is if they commit a small social faux pas

I respect the honesty. Curious, though: would you say that in a job interview too?

No, and I'd also judge the interviewer hard for asking that question. I don't like interview questions that are really just cues to start spewing rehearsed bullshit.

I agree with your point, but as a software developer I’d much prefer the generic response in your example.

lol yeah, everyone I meet now immediately asks me what I'm going to do about AI

Interestingly, this is what the book "How to Win Friends and Influence Others" gets at. While it's ostensibly a sales book, the very basis is how to be genuinely nice to people so they want to talk to you and be around you. And from those relationships come sales opportunities.

As another person for whom relation stuff does not come naturally, this was incredibly helpful because little pieces of advise really do work, because they really are nice things to do/say.

A favorite example of mine, when starting to talk to someone who probably already doesn't care for you is to find something -- anything -- that it's clear they like or chose, which you also happen to like, and pay it a genuine positive complement. And perhaps talk about it a little bit.

I've heard a lot of negativity around this book, and haven't read it yet. Did you feel like it was positive in the sense of genuine niceness, or negative in the sense of trying to be manipulative, etc.?

What the others have said, and also, there are folks who take and implement the advise wrongly. Like, one of the other points is that people like knowing their name was remembered and hearing it used. I take this as "remember people's names, and when you haven't seen them in a while, say 'Hi, name!'" or so.

Some folks take this over the top and do a weird, false-feeling thing like sprinkle the person's name into conversation over and over, or at the start/middle/end. And it makes the conversation feel stilted, fake, and like a situation is being forced. And that casts a negative light on the overarching idea that people like being remembered, and their own name is a big part of that.

It's really more of a dated manual on social etiquette. The negativity is mainly that it seems every salesperson is gifted a copy and implements the same techniques. Similar to how Chick Fil A has ruined the phrase "My Pleasure". The author himself states that it's genuine interest that forms connections, but ultimately the goal is to get something like a deal closed, the employee complying or the customer buying. Just depends on how you frame it.

I am certainly guilty of general negativity to that book. There are plenty of legitimate gripes, like the content is simplistic and overly repetitive. It really could have been a 10 page pamphlet.

But let's put that aside, the negativity really comes from the fact that every time I have seen it brought up in real life, it is being wielded like a cudgel by a person not practicing what is in the book. It is effectively corporate short hand for "you need to learn how to be a better servant".

The negativity is from people who only read the title. The book content's are about skills to be friendly. Some people over index on the skills to being off-putting because it's such a popular book that many can tell when you're using "skills" from the book

> most people respond positively when others are interested in them.

To be fair, most people are uninteresting.

Maybe the goal should be to be okay with being ordinary.

TRYING to be interesting (or interested) is just tiresome.

Also, you don't have to be interested in each other: Find a shared interest.

And it doesn't have to be anything special; you could find joy together in the mundane:

Petting cats, watching the rain, taking a walk through the woods without saying anything..

Depends on how we define interesting. Interesting in itself is pretty overrated imo, I don't need you to be some artist who lives in the streets and is addicted to heroin - I mean that's really interesting but not something I want in my life. Be boring - have a 9-5 job like me. But be agreeable, be interested in me as well from time to time and we can relate. Whether we truly hit it off is not about how interesting I am to you or you are to me I think.

Normal people are interesting.

Ordinary people can be interesting though.

If you meet someone who is completely and utterly uninteresting, that in itself is interesting.

There are no uninteresting natural numbers. One, as the smallest natural number, is certainly interesting. Assume all numbers up to n are interesting. If n+1 is uninteresting it is the smallest uninteresting number and therefore interesting.

And yet everybody cares precisely nothing about almost all natural numbers.

… where we came in. The premise is flawed. n + 3 can never become interesting because when n + 2 becomes the smallest uninteresting number, n + 1 cannot hold that distinction at the same time, so n + 1 loses its interesting status as the smallest interesting number, and becomes uninteresting again, which means n + 2 is no longer the smallest uninteresting number, n + 1 is and isn’t this…

Most people are completely and utterly uninteresting. I feel that interest in people is largely a physical reaction rather than a thought exercise. Even people who have done cool stuff are often uninteresting. Their story may be interesting, but their person is not.

> Their story may be interesting, but their person is not.

What do you mean by that? What's the difference between a person and their story?

that's subjective and not worth discussing much if you do not specify what makes a person interesting for you

I don't really know. Why do we get along with some people but not others? There's probably a definable reason but it's not usually a conciously-reasoned thing that can be easily specified or classified.

> Most people are completely and utterly uninteresting

How do we even define interesting ? Like interesting opinions/hobbies? Good storyteller ? Who cares about that. I do need to like you and you need to be an agreeable person imo, but no having a real unique life or opinions is really not that necessary imo. Having a sense of humor is a big plus to me though.

Because people expect another person to be a amusement park- a show. They are not. They are a information processing system- often not even fully self-aware of the information their subconcious weaves into complex ideas. Surveilance and reflection does not improve that performance or allows to reproduce it. It instead produces distraction.

This is why you can not "interview" innovative or creative people- and only get a flat "imposter" image of the creative person. The observation hinders the process and all you get is basically the "house keeping" routines- weaving together some plausible stories, on how a "idea" came to be.

The true process is a walk in the mountains. Some scribbled notes. Glued together during some conversation on a similar topic with friends. I always found it fascinating, how the "iterrators" can dismiss something/someone that clearly works- just because they can not dissect and reproduce it.

Are you conflating normal interest in another's well being with Einstein like outlierness?

I can find "interesting" (based on a boring reading from a dictionary) the unknown days events of a friend even if while knowing the person was not engaged in breaking down understanding of reality.

It's not the person or their todo list that's interesting but awareness of a cognitive disconnect of not knowing what their todo list was that day.

Being interested is also a lot more easy than to be interesting. The latter really depends on the eye of the beholder. Whereas I make it a game to find out what is interesting about the person across from me. Sometimes I strike gold, sometimes it's a dumpsterfire and we implicitly agree never to talk again. But once you strike gold and meet people you genuinely are really interested in, you get addicted.

>Once I figured out that this was a skill and not just something people that are not me are born with

I agree that it is a skill, but like any skill it helps immensely to start learning it as a child. It took me until my 30s to realize that my parents were essentially... antisocial. And that most of the social skill lessons I took from them, if any, were probably wrong and unproductive. I spent a lot of time (and money) trying to learn to overcome that, but never made any progress.

>Once I figured out that this was a skill and not just something people that are not me are born with,

Agreed, but I'm not so sure this was previously true. Or at least not _as_ true. There used to be a lot of more socializing by default. People who were poor in this skill set still had relatively regular social opportunities.

This seems to be gone today, and now it's purely manual.

+1 for the potluck dinners. I find much satisfaction in seeing my social circles merging.

Another lost art is keeping a contacts list and contacting them regularly. People used to have these lists on paper and then send cards at least once per year on birthdays/christmas/independence. With this being relegated to social media, your contacts often fall in the cracks of the quirks of tech companies.

Every year I make some (handmade) digital art and write a letter with it about our year, and then I email it (bcc’d) to all our friends, family, and other people we want to stay in touch with.

It’s not as tangible as a paper card but by being an email, people can just hit reply and answer. Every year a few dozen people write back to our card (out of maybe 350 recipients), and a lot of people have said that this is one of their favorite messages to get all year.

I think people can tell when you actually put time into something instead of just making a quick conventional card with platitudes. It’s helped us keep in touch with people from all over the place, across different continents, etc, who we might not stay in touch with so much otherwise.

Yep, I used to merge my circles often in the past, usually at restaurants and bars. I did not think about it otherwise though than optimizing my available time to target as many friends from different groups as possible.

But this also created a group of its own that I was coining together for regular Thursday craft beer night or occasionally having wine and beef together.

I stopped though, many years ago as when I started my own family, family and work consumed me too much to have regular night life and meetup exercising and my home was always my sanctum, I rarely invite people to my home. this is where i rest and only some inner circle has entrance there.

that inner circle was developed during last 20+ years and I don't find much space to expand this circle unless somebody new spends with me 20+ years having random access to my limited time.

And that's ok. having up to 5 close friends who you see and talk to regularly if you're 45+ is already enough. Random folk... can stay online. like here to share ideas and then bring them back home.

I actually stopped looking for new friends based on the interests.. I have enough in that gang to cover already. sharing interest related insights is where I use internet mostly.

one of the reasons why place like HN started becoming attractive again as after ditching FB, Discord and many other places with just noise instead of valuable insight and content only HN, lobsters and telnet/ssh BBSes become legitimate sources of idea sharing and tech progress.

other topics are covered fine for decades and when I'm randomly at bar sometimes (usually work delegations outside my own town) then I'm open for one evening conversation about any nonsense just to stay connected with the city folk, but no huge expectactions about phone sharing or another meeting.

I never share my social accounts connection with strangers. I stopped doing that.. it's just spam after all and like collecting f* pokemon cards instead of having meaningful relationship. One can't maintain relationship with 1000+ people so I dropped all that and keep online activities either socially anonymous or narrowed to under 100 people whom I at least remember I had a drink with, once.

This mirrors my experience quite a bit. Hobbies that involve creative thinking and leaning on each others' skills are incredible at creating lasting social bonds which go beyond the hobby itself. For me that's music (creating it) and tabletop gaming (especially D&D or any similar RPG).

Meeting others through those activities and then gradually building upon the relationships via other social outings, dinner parties, weekend trips etc.

I'm also introverted but learned early on in life that it often just takes one person instigating things to rally a whole group.

You're doing good work, not just for yourself, but for others.

Sometimes, it may be just the knowledge that you're contributing positively to other peoples lives that makes it worth sacrificing some of your own comfort.

> Personally I've found satisfaction in going to meetups to find like minds

I enjoy meetups, but those have been pretty much nonexistent here since covid.

Meetup.com used to be full of in person stuff, now it is full of online stuff instead.

I really don't understand why they have virtual meetups on their platform. Their branding used to be all, "get out from behind a screen and meet people IRL!"

Pivoted during Covid and never reevaluated I guess

Same as last time.[1] The ones who “make an effort” go to top of the thread. Why are things the way they are? static Make dinner for friends.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49892789

Join a club!

It did wonders for me.

Small side project, if you know of a nice club in you area please submit it: https://clubs.fyi

Does it get easier overtime for you?

> Does it get easier over time for you?

Not OP, but wanted add for myself it did.

I took the CBT approach. First to change how I thought about things (as a skill to practice) and then that allowed me to do a form of exposure therapy. Mostly finding something small to start with, a single relevant question or comment that is genuine. Saying something nice to someone, like a stressed out cashier at the grocery store goes a long way, or commenting on something like someone reading the packaging of a item and you know it and can give a brief review.

I didn't start trying to have deep conversations or expectations of ever seeing that person again. Only simple interaction for social skill improvement and over time this small talk started to come more naturally. Then that snowball into this lighter feeling around people (so anything would have been perceived as rejection before became not personal and moved on) and that, in gaming terms, was a level-up to more meaningful interaction, then another level-up and another etc. This is a decades long practice that is still going. Like many skills some pick up faster than others.

Overall yes. When I attend a meetup then I have a mindset of putting myself out there and should I meet an interesting and kind person, then just ask to get coffee with them sometime and talk shop. Also I remind myself that the current conversation went well from my perspective, so probably from theirs too.

It does. It eventually sinks in that no one is watching nearly as much as you think, and are for the most part disinterested in what you’re doing. Not in a judgey way, but in the sense that nobody saw you do that slightly weird thing, and even if they did they’re still more interested in how fat the pigeon outside is than anything you do.

Dang you're on top of things, kudos. Wish I had the mental energy to do all that.

YMMV but I find people who want to exchange socials like insta far less likely to meet up again then just old fashioned phone numbers. To such an extent that I exchange socials and not waste the time.

do ppl usually have instagram accounts?

> being the instigator for most social occasions but the pros outweigh the cons

It depends on the personality. Some people are very open. Some are not. I find social open-ness much harder than closed-ness. The open-ness approach, though, is most likely the better strategy indeed. It just helps little when people are naturally closed off mentally already.

I'm worried that although you might build up a big group of acquaintances that you hang out with on a regular basis this way, none of those would quite fit the definition of "friends".

A friend to me is someone with whom you can drop the mask of social propriety near-completely - share unpopular opinions, make racist jokes (directed at them or others), talk about the opposite sex (assuming hetero), gossip about other people, talk about your own relationships, give honest feedback, do borderline illegal stuff like smoke weed etc. Because this is what intimacy means.

If I meet my friend after a bad haircut and he doesn't immediately go "what the fuck is wrong with your hair?", he's not a true friend, just someone I hang out with.

I think most people stop having friendships like this after grade school or university. I suspect some people have never had a friendship like this.

I think the cool thing about this, especially as an older person (40's), is that it creates a low-stress, high-interactivity scenario. So while some of the people may just be acquaintances that come to one or two potlucks, some will inevitably click and become more than just once a month dinner guests.

Forming friendships after schooling isn't hard, but it takes work. That said, I've had a good number of small social interactions that usually don't even lead to an acquaintance over the last decade, and even those feel good just to get out of my shell. Then there's the people I'd recognize if I saw them again and maybe remember their names. And a small but close group of about 12 and counting have become incredibly close friends that have recently begun mingling with my prior set of really close friends (different states, so we have a couple yearly gatherings).

But that interactivity is pretty hollow. I'm sure it cures the itch but it's not the same as having a friend.

If it is indeed always hollow rather than perhaps just usually hollow, you may find a common denominator in your mirror.

No one's just going to become a lifelong friend of radical candor bumping in to you waiting in line for coffee for the same reason that you're not going to become someone else's lifelong friend of radical candor when you bump in to them waiting for coffee.

The schoolyard friends you mentioned didn't just automagically happen either. You were thrust in to an environment with lots of variables. You remained in that environment for a significant period of time. There were some you vibed with on perhaps just the first day, and some of those continued to vibe with you in the coming days, weeks, months, and years. Some of them went different ways over the years, and perhaps you stuck with one or two for the entire time, but that cohesion is effort whether it feels that way or not. It requires the right initial conditions and for the conditions to continue to be correct over time.

The bestest greatest friends of all time can fall to simple geographical distance if one or both of the participants isn't fulfilled by the new long-distance nature of the relationship. The conditions must remain sufficient for the relationship to endure.

The only way to see if the conditions are sufficient is to meet people and cultivate relationships with them. You as you are will naturally filter many or most just as many or most would filter you, but where's the harm in that? No one's friends with everyone, and not every friend need be some platonic soul mate.

I think you don't realize how hollow the initial interactions were with the people you consider friends now. You have to start somewhere. It's just when you are younger you do not have a baseline of what a really good friend is.

How do you know that it's hollow?

Beyond that, the second half of my first paragraph was about how some of those people probably become more than just acquaintances.

> , none of those would quite fit the definition of "friends".

Why can't the big group of acquaintances not lead to real friendship?

I would haver guesst that's the way you find friends. Stranger -> acquaintances -> friends -> close friends?

Often it stops there, that's what I mean. A big group of people to hang out with could give you the illusion of having friends when it's not really friendship, because it lacks the deep intimacy that comes with a good friendship.

There are more people LARPing as friends than are actually friends these days. Then I can see why many people reject "friendships" completely. Just dressing up and doing stuff with a few people is tedious unless it's mainly just about the thing you're doing (such as sports).

But how would you get ~real~ friends if not through casual meetups first?

I mean sure, you could use casual meetups to meet new people, but friendship really develops and exists in a 1:1 context. I re-read the root comment and it seems like the person has the right approach initially - meet at a meetup, invite for 1:1 coffee afterward.

But then he invites them to his potluck and I think the friendship dies there. That potluck is like a graveyard of all his potential friendships. It just becomes a "hangout group" i.e. fake friends. Also, every other month is too infrequent.

Personally I think the best way to make friends is at places where you might meet them in a context that gives you sufficient and regular 1:1 time. This is almost always school or work.

I think you're missing the "slowly build a friendship, and hopefully they (I) make friends with the regulars at dinner party" and wrongly assuming that the potluck is the end of the road.

They don't say that they don't then go on to develop deeper friendships outside of the potluck, only that the potluck is a step in the road. It provides a low-stress low-stakes scene of congenially likely like-minded people in which people who are relative strangers can pair and group off if they choose to.

Approaching someone at a potluck like this, or chatting to your dinner neighbors, is way easier and likely more fruitful than chatting up strangers at a bar.

It is far easier to develop a friendship with someone who you can see interacting positively with your other friends. Easier to see more facets of an individual as they interact with people of slightly differing opinion.

I really genuinely cannot conceive how you're seeing it as a graveyard rather than a garden. Like...throwing a potluck is so vastly much more effort than showing up to someone else's event. They are putting genuine effort in to regularly surrounding themselves with people they enjoy. There's just no way that any of those people are "fake friends". They may be but mere acquantances, but even then these are people that are chosen to be invited. Everyone there is there because they were wanted and wanted to be there. If the host feelt they were fake friends, they wouldn't be invited, would they?

Compare this to a monthly coworker dinner where the only reason everyone's there is because the boss said so. Where everyone agrees Janice from accounting is always trying way to hard to laugh at everyone's jokes and Bob from QA just didn't quite grok the message behind "How to Make Friends and Influence People" and so uses everyone's name in every sentence because he figures that's important.

To me, being close with someone does not involve being insulted, insulting them or making racist jokes. I also dont particularly care about other peoples haircuts, one way or the other. I do have friends I spend 1 on 1 with who I am completely open with.

> I think most people stop having friendships like this after grade school or university.

When I was younger, I was never open with people who would be insulting to me or found it important to make racist jokes. I would simply not tell them what I think to avoid conflict or insult. They were assymetrically open, I was not.

But I genuinely did not cared about their haircuts either.

I hear you but maybe not everyone wants this. It sounds great but it's also high investment/high effort and sometimes hurts and disappoints. I think some people are fine with having shallower relationships than that.

Maybe you don’t have friends because you’re a racist in your heart of hearts?

I have plenty of legit friends who enjoy my racist humor, tyvm. Most of us are people of color btw.

One comment up, you had no real friends. Now, there are plenty of them.

Nowhere did I say that.

Only other racist enjoy racist humor. Claiming you aren't white doesn't suddenly make racism ok.

There is mean-spirited racist humor and non-mean-spirited racist humor. Would you say Russell Peters is a racist?

True racism is about exclusion. If you'd never meaningfully associate with a person of some certain race(s), you're a racist. Doesn't matter if you're the most polite soul in the world.

There are people who have traveled the whole world, eat ethnic food all the time, do yoga, vote left etc but would never make friends with someone not of their own race. They are the real racists. Racism is simply defined as whether you consider race to be a meaningful way to classify people.

There's a post-Covid dynamic in large cities where people often report that meetups are not as social as they once were, that one isn't isn't likely to meet anyone outside the meetup (or perhaps ever again even inside it). It can even be cringe to some when someone like yourself acts as instigator, because there is a gnawing feeling the world has changed utterly and your approach is a futile attempt to go back to the past.

I don't know what the solution is, but I don't think it is general social meetups, or hobby meetups, or religions of the lax and casual type (someone posted on a previous HN thread that the Haredim and a comparable Muslim sect seem to be doing alright).

My experience is that meetups have largely the same dynamic, but the attendees very rarely reach out to get coffee. I can't think of a single instance in recent memory where someone has asked me, and yet I have many experiences where people later thank me for instigating. That used to bother me until I spoke with some people about it and realized it seemingly doesn't happen much these days outside of business pitches.

But personally I cannot afford to worry if they think it's cringe. For a long time I was lonely, even in a healthy marriage, but having friends that I see regularly is something that I have found to be a vital aspect of having good mental health and avoiding stagnation. So I continually take the risk and put myself out there when I meet an interesting and kind person.

My dad used to have our uncle and auntie over for dinner literally every other week, they'd stay until late hours of the night, they'd chat, laugh, listen to music, what have you.

And I remember once hearing my mum ask my dad - why do you keep inviting them over, they never invite us in return. And I remember what my dad said - yeah they don't, but I'm doing it because I want to be close to them and I enjoy spending time with them - even if they never invite us over it's still worth it.

Who is reporting this? That has not been my experience at all. Social hobbies are how I make almost all of my friends as an adult (specifically: music and tabletop gaming). It's been very consistent through my entire adult life. I often have to be the instigator at first, but it has led to lasting friendships where everyone contributes. To the degree of traveling overseas together and attending each others' weddings.

EDIT: The only "cringe" meetups I've attended were "singles meetups" in my city. Mild desperation and no common interests aren't exactly a social lubricant. Hobby meetups are great because if you're truly interested in the subject matter it's an easy/exciting conversation starter.

If you are somewhere with live music, consider yourself lucky. That has declined in many countries in the last decade, as so widely reported in the music press.

You mention tabletop gaming. This is exactly the stereotype among friends and colleagues of unfulfilling meetups in a city I recently moved from: multiple games meetups sprung up around the university and public library as a way to get people meeting and talking, but most casual attendees didn't find the natural socializing they hoped for ("people just seem too desperate"), while players keen on the games and not looking for socializing per se complained about the casuals not being commited enough.

I'm near a major city in the US. While live music as an industry is under attack from corporate behemoths like Ticketmaster pricing out small working artists, the local scene for musicians just looking to jam is alive and well. If you live within an hour of any major city in the US you can easily find people to play music with. I think the distinction between live music as a business and live music as a hobby is important; the headlines are talking about the former. (Not to downplay the problems that working musicians are facing. I feel for them).

For tabletop gaming, it definitely depends on the game. There certainly are salty regulars who have been playing their specific game for decades and who lack social grace with newcomers. But there are also nicer folks who enjoy teaching newcomers and building a community. It all comes down to having good event organizers. Sounds like the ones you heard about didn't manage expectations or toxic personalities well, which is a bummer.

To be clear I've absolutely experienced salty cringe behavior from stereotypical neckbeard gamer types at these events. But I've also met really nice people that I ended up hanging out with independently. Each meetup seems to attract a different crowd so I had to try a few before finding a group that was the right vibe for me.

Where do you guys find space to play live music with a group in major cities? An apartment late at night, one floor up from where I live?

Haha. Most cities have rehearsal spaces for rent. The more expensive ones let you store your gear there indefinitely, like a storage unit, and cheaper ones let you rent the space hourly but you haul your gear in and out for the day.

Fascinating! I had no idea this existed or that the numbers worked out. What's a typical rate per hour for a modest space?

Probably about $20-30 per hour but varies by city

Rehearsal spaces, small venues cheap enough to be booked by a group of 5-6 people for a day/evening (not necessarily bars or concert spaces), book a studio for a few hours and everyone pitch in.

Nearly 25 years ago, I had some friends from church who were able to organize a very stable meetup for tabletop gaming, and they met at least 2 times every week in a very large and popular, independent coffeehouse downtown. They had things going smoothly before I joined up, and let me tell you, it sort of saved my life. I was homeless at the time, but they kinda got me addicted to Magic: the Gathering, and at least it was a somewhat benign way to spend my evenings.

Note: this wasn't a church activity by any means, even though 3 of us were in ministry together. We didn't evangelize, although sometimes we discussed our common faith. This was strictly personal, social time for everyone.

The years we met in that coffeehouse were very successful. We often enjoyed at least 10 people around the table, all sorts of kids, although my church friends were elderly, retirement-age, but very sensitive to the needs of the poor and the street people who often joined us. That coffeehouse eventually closed, so we moved on to a Starbucks, and the stable group became smaller, but more tightly-knit. Eventually, I found a really awesome teahouse that was just a few blocks off the beaten path, and our group moved there. We no longer found ourselves yelling/screaming over the noise of crowds and steamed milk machines.

Eventually our group lost nearly everyone except us three. Sometimes we had a guest, but they didn't stay. I don't know why people drifted away. Perhaps we weren't welcoming, or fun, or young enough. But we did diversify our activities into board games, such as Clue, Rummikub, Boggle, trivia, Scrabble, you name it. And the teas and snacks were delicious there.

Now one key feature of the group is that one guy was there for the games. He was hardcore, heads-down, "we're playing these games!" with intense concentration. The other lady, she was there for socializing and chatting, but her garage-sale habit had garnered a closet full of games to bring. I was there for both, I suppose, but mainly I liked the social aspect, getting out of the house, having some good boba tea and stuff. The board games were definitely a means to an end. So we all had varying reasons for being there.

Sadly, the pandemic lockdowns killed our group for good. Not even the teahouse was able to weather that storm, and they closed their doors permanently, too. I haven't seen my friends in that long a time. We tried doing some online gaming together, coordinated, but it wasn't the same at all! I really miss them, and I really miss the excuse to get out of the house, and socialize, and I wish there was a stable activity that had that sort of impetus in 2026, but all my friends were made through those gaming activities, and as a result, I no longer have any friends.

Also many people simply aged out of it. When I moved to a major city I'd attend every programming meetup (had something to go to 3 nights/week for a solid 3 years), after covid I found more worthwhile hobbies with others.

What COVID broke is that there was no one to take over from the previous club leaders so they mostly just died with nothing to replace them and now the new generation doesn't really know how to rebuild it because they never experienced it.

On top of meetups evaporating, the big issue is post-COVID meetups meeting 3 nights/week nearly impossible. I have 3 or 4 meetups I try to regularly go to and I'm lucky if they are run monthly.

I was recently watching a video mentioning a study that it takes ~200 hours of constant contact on average to make a "close friend" and some 40-60 hours to get go from acquaintance to "casual friend", then 80-100 to be a what you'd simply call "friend".

Meeting up for 2-4 hours a month would take years upon years to make anything out if you don't supplement it yourself.

The likely study in question, for those interested.

Hall, J. A. (2019). How many hours does it take to make a friend? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(4), 1278-1296. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407518761225

> It can even be cringe to some when someone like yourself acts as instigator

Yes it can feel cringe but I would argue we need to just accept it as prosocial and not cringe. We are cringe for thinking normal social things are cringe.

Like, I would probably have thought OP was after my money like 5 years ago. But now I would just assume good faith.

I am fully convinced that "cringe" is just the death throws of patriarchal societal engineering.

It's like "Well, sure, they can be gay, but ~holding hands in public~? We've got to have some sense of morality around here or we're no better than animals!"

Living with your parents in your 20s isn't cringe, it's a powerfule economic decision. Having or not having kids isn't cringe it's a personal decision. Carrying a dog in a purse is cringe, it's practical. Being an impoverished drug addict isn't cringe. Crying out for help with mental illness isn't cringe. Telling loved ones you love them in public isn't cringe.

Inviting people to continue sociallizing with you at a later date isn't cringe, that's just fucking friendship.

People are using the word to label entirely regular perfectly acceptable behavior as if it is genuinely bad simply because they don't like it. Sure, okay, you personally don't like it when people express interest in you beyond your 30 second attention span, but who the fuck gave you the right to decide that society can't make friends in public? Damn, okay, OP said it was cringe to ask people if they want to hang out, guess I'll just die a hermit.

I agree.

There is a need for the word 'cringe' for wannabe, fake, dishonest, superficial etc. expressions that are embarrassing. But it is way over used and should not be used on people who are trying to mock them. It is way too easy to be a critique.

Do we need a new word? We already call fakes fakes and the dishonest dishonest. We already have embarrassing embarrassed.

Really, I suppose it's not the words so much as the useage. People used to call some of the same perfectly normal things embarrassing rather than cringe in order to try to police behavior; like when telling your kids you love them in public is suddenly some sort of sin or when macho men aren't allowed to defer to their wives' expert opinion because "their friends say it's embarrassing"

> that one isn't isn't likely to meet anyone outside the meetup (or perhaps ever again even inside it).

I don't think that's a post-COVID dynamic as much as a pre-COVID one that got accelerated. When I moved to a new city in 2018, I spent a lot of time at meetups and had exactly that issue. No one would want to meetup outside the group (to be fair, most of it was that some people seemed to be willing to travel really far for a meetup group but not for other things), and you wouldn't see the same people often enough to really be friends within the group.

All of that sounds awful.

I got tired of being the planner.

As soon as I stopped it all stopped.

And like really all stopped; via digital comms everyone from the social group has said they realized after the plans I pulled together was their extent of their social life.

American culture fuckin' sucks. And it's Americans propping it up. It isn't Russia or the other usual boogeymen.

Well, here is the real truth - everyone’s culture sucks in the right circumstances.

We’re going through the aftermath of the old social paradigm collapsing, while dealing with the hangover from the COVID response (including massive inflation), and the robber barons are feasting on the corpse while manipulating the public because of course they are.

We’ll find a new one eventually, and people will adapt (eventually) and they won’t feel the suck in the same way everyone used to the old way does right now.

It will just be normal to them.

Of course it’s going to suck in the meantime.

You could ask anyone who grew up in the USSR, India (who wasn’t top .001% anyway), China would lived through the Great Leap Forward, etc.

> I must continually remind myself that I am the instigator and it's feels quite strange as a heavily introverted person

Ironically, the potluck style events strike me as the most introverted way to socialize. Not to denigrate the initiative at all, I have two Canadian friendsgivings this month, and they're fun, but I really wouldn't see the hosts frequently otherwise, because they're the ones packing their schedules in advance, moving to the distant suburbs, or just don't get out much. I don't feel like I can hit them up for something more casual, whether it's always true or not, it's more of a calendar event style relationship I have with them.

The reason I don't take it upon myself to host these myself is primarily because the substance of my social life comes largely from common interests outside the house that I invest deeply into, some of which are non-event hangouts just to watch movies at theirs, hiking, climbing, billiards bar, coffee and a walk etc... I don't try to find like-minded people as much as I do people that I have enough chemistry with, and build on that.

That said, in general it is important to try to take any kind of initiative you can. Friendships don't build themselves, and everyone's scared to stick their neck out.

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