Before I moved to my current location, I created a meetup account for myself, here, and joined many meetup groups around varying personal and professional inter

Before I moved to my current location, I created a meetup account for myself, here, and joined many meetup groups around varying personal and professional interests, along with some general social ones, some singles ones, and some age-range-based ones. I browsed the local subreddit, and a local, social events subreddit, and joined discord groups associated with both the meetups and the subreddits. When I actually moved, I forced myself to go to several each week, to bootstrap a physical social network from nothing. Some conclusions from this: - It's a lot of work at first, if you're not extroverted. I wasn't. You gotta force yourself to go out. - If you go to a particular meetup enough, you'll see some of the same people there, and can make friends, and can be a "regular", welcoming new folks into the friends if it's their first time. - If you go to multiple different meetups, you might find some other overlapping people, and can make friends. - If you go to meetups enough, you develop an "elevator pitch" for you as a person/friend/social creature, essentially you learn to introduce yourself without effort or anxiety. - Meetups are usually organized by normal folks, and you can help out with one or start your own, and this helps me feel a sense of local grounding and friendship. - Doing this is a great way to learn a new city, both the places and the streets. - "Are you with the meetup group?" when at a public venue is a good icebreaker and way to introduce yourself to people who are and also to people who aren't :) *- edited to clarify that this is an icebreaking, not a gatekeeping question