I did something similar (continuously went to meetups for two years), but had the exact opposite experience. Now I have more friends than I can realistically ke

I did something similar (continuously went to meetups for two years), but had the exact opposite experience. Now I have more friends than I can realistically keep up with. Just repeatedly showing up to these things and making an effort to talk to these people a bit each time and eventually I stopped being a stranger to people and started getting invited to private events they hosted. It might have helped that the meetups I focused on were often board game related (or movies or dinners or theater) and I'm a board game nut, though. I'm also getting more and move involved with my local writer's group (hosted two writer's workshops last year). I've gone to several software development meetups and had really poor experiences befriending people there. People seem to be more shy or standoff-ish, or the focus is too much on the lecture or 'hacking in a corner' and not on a group activity, so that might be part of it. Oh, also I think too many of those people go to those for 'professional networking' purposes and not to have some fun talking about technology and making some genuine connections, so it feels a little artificial, too.