4 ms·
I liked this article. I think more about friendships than any other philosophical topic. I moved to a new city at 22 where I knew almost no one. It turns out th
by jackconsidine 4y ago
I liked this article. I think more about friendships than any other philosophical topic. I moved to a new city at 22 where I knew almost no one. It turns out that it's orders of magnitude harder making friends without a few seed connections. The nuances of meeting people and building relationships are so arbitrary and idiosyncratic; some things, like sports, happen to be really conducive to making friends, whereas conferences and tech meetups for me proved less fertile. Even acquaintances often simply aren't looking to change their group of close friends.
It was frustrating and discouraging for a long time and then suddenly I found myself with people to call on and spend time with. Half a decade later I moved and had the opportunity to try the experiment again. This time secondary connections made finding my network almost trivial. Maybe age helped too, being further removed from the university cliques.
I was relieved to find out, albeit way after the fact, that many have this experience. One friend recently quit his job to start a company focused on this phenomenon [0]. I hope he can displace the zombie of Meetup.
[0] https://getopenmat.com/ https://getopenmat.com/
- Behemoth66 4y agoThanks for this comment. I just moved to a new city at 25 and have been pessimistic about being able to meet anyone.
- jackconsidine 4y agoLove the username- please tell me it's a Master + Margarita reference Anecdotally here's what's worked for me: 1. Intramural sports- even if you're not sporty, some leagues have zero barrier to entry (Bowling or sand volleyball 6's). There are usually pickup sports apps as well that you could probably find based on your city (i.e. JustPlay) 2. Volunteering- especially neighborhood / trail cleanup groups that you can find on Instagram or Meetup. These are low commitment and people tend to be friendly. Habitat for Humanity was another one that had lots of young people new to the city. 3. Free Fitness (or any other hobby) Groups- you can find anywhere. November Project, for example is in most cities
- legerdemain 4y agoApple Store link on the site is broken, and there's no such app in the Apple Store?
- jackconsidine 4y agoI see, I think the app is in beta / TestFlight right now
- leonhard 4y agoWhat kind of secondary connections were those the second time if I may ask? I might be in this situation soon and wondering if I can direct it in some way.
- jackconsidine 4y agoOne example is that when I was moving, existing friends from the old city gave me a lot of tips of things to get involved in, i.e. there was a run club in a certain neighborhood or whatever. Otherwise, previous friends knew people and put me in touch. And finally there were 1-2 people who had also moved to the same city at some point, making it easy to plug into their networks