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Ask HN: Have you made IRL friends from HN usage?
Hi all! Its me the resident weirdo...hardkorebob. Have any of you made a good pal, friend or bud on here this website we use everyday? If so, did you appreciate the odds of such luck? Thanks. Happy Sunday/Monday to all.
- lakotasapa 3y agoNever. Fulltime dad since 2019. I've been lurking here and on Reddit but never got anyone to respond :( Little sad. However an impetus for mother of all inventions: social network for plutonic relations? ;) Loneliness is a crisis and becoming an epidemic. There needs to be a way men in particular needs to find a way to connect without making them feel...may I say... despairing or desperate? :(
- hardkorebob 3y agoI hear you bro. I feel the same way. Glad you expressed it on the money. For sure loneliness is rampant and the connection to be had with other men of fellow interest is a very difficult thing for me as an American. Super social and friendly dude but the major issue in this here fine country is the ignorant mass as an ideology, people reject what they don't understand and everyone is assuming on a constant basis, everyone on defense. It is very sticky film of ... sadness for sure. But get my info off the profile man and hmu anytime.
- CM30 3y agoNope. Sites like this and Reddit aren't places where I've ever become close to anyone, let alone become friends with them or ever met up in real life. I think the format is just not well suited to making real connections between users. Everyone's just too anonymous and hard to recognise for that.
- hardkorebob 3y agoI guess. I think it's a choice people make. I put myself out here. Am I a target now? Don't care. Am I worried if I will fail with all this? Nope. I'm simply been online and distant but now I'm just gonna talk to everyone and make them feel like I am a friend because I am the friend, that dude that's just there to say it when need be. Anyhow maybe we all are coming to certain realizations because of the toxic environment we are all figuring out why and understanding the root causes of things. In any case. I'm open get my info off my profile.
- CM30 3y agoAt least from my perspective it's not so much whether someone puts themself out there, as much as the format kinda treating the authors of comments as interchangable. Like, it's unlikely I'll recognise a name from a previous comments section or post, simply because it's such a minor part of the page and so de emphasised compared to what they posted. I know that people here are usually not toxic, and I wouldn't be worried about sharing personal info that much, but it's just an 'all names kinda blend in with this format' thing.
- hardkorebob 3y agoI see what you are saying. And I do like that this place lends itself for such thinking and being. I am taking a new approach at things and just being available to respond honestly to everything. Just another dude here. Nothing to see.
- hardkorebob 3y ago[dead]
- muzani 3y agoPlenty. There's not a lot of Malaysians on here, so many tend to drop me an email when they figure it out. Most hang around the same communities (hackers, YC, tech, etc) so we end up knowing lots of mutual people too. It's a small world here. There's also meeting people by proxy. I find another community from here. People on that community are friends with one another. Turns out those people browse HN too.
- hardkorebob 3y agoThat's great. Seems like it is all about location.
- jichu14273 3y agoI haven't made any friends yet because I've only been here for a month, but now I want to meet some friends.
- hardkorebob 3y agoCool. Good luck! Try to use this in balance to the rest of your life. I tell you by experience it is easy to get sucked into this place.
- Peroni 3y agoI'm not exaggerating when I say that HN changed my life. When I first started using the site almost 15yrs ago I was a junior recruiter barely making ends meet. I learned a huge amount about the tech startup world through HN and when I found out there was a small HN meetup in London (where I worked), I jumped at the chance to check it out and ended up attending the meet-up every month. I quickly became friends with the organiser of the meetup (Dmitri) and started helping him out. Together over the next 10 years we turned the meetup into the largest tech meetup in Europe with nearly 10k members and an average attendance of 500 people (max capacity for our venue). I ended up hosting the meetup and through that event (plus HN itself) my career took off. I've worked with multiple YC companies and have launched various products and businesses leveraging the network I created through HN. Dmitri and his family are still very close friends and honestly, it really is all thanks to HN.
- hardkorebob 3y agoThis is such a great comment to read as I wake up. Thank you HN for allowing me to express myself and give others like this an opportunity to flourish!! I understand that I am not the greatest communicator but IRL if I have to wipe the earth's sorry a$$ I would because I am a servant to all. Plus I ran a portable toilet business in Lakeland and now removed dead people in VA. So why am I here I have no clue? Never felt I belonged. And I doubt a story like these would happen to me. IMHO, the sand Valley can't handle this boricua sauce.
- zimpenfish 3y agoNope but I have known at least two other (infrequent) posters IRL in the past.
- hardkorebob 3y agoYeah I've never met anyone IRL that even knows what HN is. For context: I've been a Hospitality professional for 20+ years.
- catlover76 3y agoI have, yeah. Mostly kind of a professional friendship, haven't talked in quite a bit though.
- hardkorebob 3y agoMaybe it's time to hit them up ;)
- codetrotter 3y agoNope.
- hardkorebob 3y agoMe neither... at least not yet.
- moralestapia 3y agoI have, several people from around the workd that I was fortunate enough to spend time with IRL. I owe so much to HN, I wish I could contribute back to it somehow.
- hardkorebob 3y agoI owe a lot to HN too! Thanks HN! This is my way of contributing atm. I wanna tell you that you all are amazing people and smarty pants.
- mburst 3y agoI've gotten a job through HN which has turned in to friendship if that counts. Every now and then meetups popup too which are cool
- hardkorebob 3y agoOh that is really great! A job thru the internet of programmers and engineers such a blessing. May it last till your end. Do you enjoy that job a lot?
- mburst 3y agoIt was a good time for sure. I worked there 7.5 years before leaving. Still keep in contact with a lot of people from that job. On the first work day of the month there are hiring threads on HN if you end up wanting to check those out
- hardkorebob 3y agoOh yes thanks for the info. Wow 7.5 years is a good run for sure. That's great you keep in touch.
- SCUSKU 3y agoWhere do you see meetups? I don't think I've ever seen them on HN but would be nice to go to one while I'm in SF!
- hardkorebob 3y agoMaybe meetup.com?
- mburst 3y agoThey pop up every now and then. Wouldn't say it's a common thing. Fwiw the overlap between a random tech meetup and HN users is probably pretty high. I've gone to a few in SF from meetup.com
- selimthegrim 3y agoNo, the metro I live in does not have a preponderance of HN users. I can name maybe 3 or 4 (not counting one that dang banned)
- hardkorebob 3y agoI live in small town too. I'm sure Richmond, VA has many HN users. Hello from FXBG/ <3 Be Kind
- selimthegrim 3y agoI live in NOLA.
- hardkorebob 3y agoOh sweet. My friend has fam down there. I've never been there but have travelled thru LA
- vgeek 3y agoHave you had Crabby Jack's on Jefferson Highway?
- selimthegrim 3y agoYes, I actually even applied to work there once as a side job, they didn’t hire me. It is good, but probably a little bit more expensive than similar food and definitely targeted towards tourists.
- hardkorebob 3y agoNever been down there. Maybe someday. Sounds like a cool spot.
- selimthegrim 3y agoIt is a seafood restaurant just outside the city.
- bestouff 3y agoYou guys exist IRL ?
- hardkorebob 3y ago[dead]
- h2odragon 3y agoNo. There's only 500 real people on the entire Internet. Been that way since 2002.
- hardkorebob 3y agolmfa0 I graduated HS that year. I was always curious what happened to everyone.
- sdenton4 3y agoReminds me of a 2001 Metafilter april fool's joke: https://www.metafilter.com/there_is_no_spoon.mefi https://www.metafilter.com/there_is_no_spoon.mefi Which really seems quite prescient, 22 years later.
- hardkorebob 3y agoThx for sharing this
- silisili 3y agoWe're all 18/F/California IRL.
- hardkorebob 3y agolmao lmao: You sparked some cool memories! Thanks!
- spacechild1 3y agoNo.
- hardkorebob 3y agoDo you wanna make some?
- spacechild1 3y agoI have made IRL friends from other online communities, though. For me, HN is too broad and anonymous and there is little 1:1 interaction compared to, say, forums. Most of the time I don't even notice the usernames.
- hardkorebob 3y agoI doesn't have to be anonymous. But I'm glad you have made friends off the web. I haven't yet.
- spacechild1 3y agoIn my case it had been a very specific community (computer music). It helps if you have the same esoteric interests :)
- hardkorebob 3y agoOh yeah...? I love computer music lol
- henriquez 3y agoNot me. I don’t have many IRL friends anyway because I roleplay “chaotic neutral” in every social situation. Turns out human beings have feelings and don’t want to deal with edgelord drama all the time.
- hardkorebob 3y agolmfa0. I don't have many local friends but I do have friends although not int(1) is good with tech in any way. Didn't know about chaotic neutral until now thanks for that. Drama is supposed to be funny not taken serious IMHO.
- dzek69 3y agoNo
- hardkorebob 3y agoMaybe you will soon ;)
- sneak 3y agoI’ve made the IRL acquaintance of two of the smartest and most well-known people on HN, thanks to HN. I also made a close IRL friend because we wore the same (obscure, in-joke) HN t-shirt to a conference. I’d love to meet more. I live in Berlin and Las Vegas, and I’m regularly in many other major cities (SF, NYC, LA, London, Tokyo). sneak@sneak.berlin, hit me up for coffee. Signal number’s on my website.
- hardkorebob 3y agoThis is great. Maybe when you in Richmond we could have coffee. I wish. Unfortunately my current job is very hectic to say the least. But if the idea is solid for sure I could make a special coffee day ;)
- ik97 3y agoIn a way, yes. I have checked Hacker News daily since I was 12, which is over 14 years ago now (excluding camping with no internet). It gave me and some of my best friends growing up some great conversations topics. I’m also sure Hacker News has started many hobbies of mine and provided tons of education/entertainment over the years. By far, I think the best benefit of HN for me socially has been making me a more interesting person due to the topics I’ve learned about here. I went from a homeschooled kid on a farm to->university->junior->mid-level SE->aspiring entrepreneur at age 26 while checking this site daily. Great site, great community, and I pray it continues in the same way it has for decades to come.
- hardkorebob 3y agoI pray with you. I love this place a lot. I have had many similar things happen to me. I have been online since 1996. Unfortunately never been able to talk to hackers IRL.
- kirubakaran 3y agoYes I have! Several, in fact. If anyone is interested, I'd love to chat. My email is in my profile :-)
- hardkorebob 3y agoAwesome!
- kcrwfrd_ 3y agoI got my job from Who’s Hiring and have subsequently made friends / good work relationships there.
- hardkorebob 3y agoThat's great! I never check those since my skills/talents are not really keen for these types of jobs. Like someone else said, human emotion and feelings are an enormous barrier. Unfortunately I give off the wrong vibe when people place their eyes on me. So I never even try to apply for a computer job. Even tho I have been regarded a wizard by non-hackers smh. Maybe one of these submissions of mine may peek interest. I'm currently participating in Hoon Academy by Urbit Education on YT. I feel like a young person again lol.
- tmaly 3y agoNot HN, but we did the first indiehackers meetup in NYC and met a ton of people. At least one in the group hits front page of HN from time to time.
- hardkorebob 3y agoThat is awesome. I haven't gone to any meetups anywhere to meet anyone. Maybe one day since I am close to DC and Richmond
- gardenhedge 3y agoNo. The internet in general is pretty bad for making friends IRL. Even the apps dedicated to it like humble bff are pretty poor.
- hardkorebob 3y agoThe problem is the cheaters and liars. The people that hide behind Terms of Use and Policies and Charters and Corporations. The people who control the world understand the reality and it is the game they force on us to play. To the unfortunate nonhumans this is normal and it is needed and desired by them. But for true humans it is an utter cesspool of nonsense and piercing thru this disgusting film of garbage is gonna take some cojones. Simply because The Establishment likes to solve everything with making you into powder pieces using mechanical tools of destruction. The only Modern Tech we have is the speed to put someone in a tomb.
- tacostakohashi 3y agoYes, I did reach out to one person about their project, turned into a weekly drinks kind of thing, and eventually petered out after a year or two. One of my frustrations with the modern internet is how infrequently it leads to offline gatherings and connections these days. It used to be very normal that mailing lists, user groups, etc. would gather online, but also have a weekly/monthly meeting, conference, or post job ads/things for sale, etc. and you'd just organically end up meeting people and hanging out. These days, the internet seems to be for people who really just want to discuss opinions endlessly and anonymously, but never do anything about it offline. One does, very occasionally, see posts on HN about meetups, but it's rare and just one-off and ad-hoc, you'd think a big city like London, NYC, Boston, Chicago, etc. could easily sustain an ongoing weekly/monthly thing.
- h2odragon 3y agoToo easy to pick up feds / scammers / dealers / other predators looking for places to recruit fresh victims. Saw an acquaintance's "Art classes" idea fall to that last year: people would pay the $10 fee and then be disruptive with a crypto pitch.
- prepend 3y agoI think the issue is there’s no reliable reputation system on the internet. I remember when Facebook launched I thought it might serve as this (eg, “oh h2odragon has a year old account and seems not like a psycho, I’ll let them come to my art class”). But Facebook wasn’t interested and stopped providing apis and whatnot. I think it didn’t align with their business model as they kind of want scams as it drives lots of revenue (in that a significant portion of ads are misleading or scams that would be devastated if people could post reputation info like “this magic mouthguard doesn’t work and just a $10 drugstore version wrapped in $40 of social media ads”).
- hardkorebob 3y agoDoes the reputation then get established using the blockchain? Is this the problem that Urbit solves? Interesting that the reliability of the blockchain doesn't have to be attached to currency. The blockchain can then actually make an actor legit? Some ideas, questions and confusions I guess.
- gnramires 3y agoI think HN deserves far more discussion on hackerspaces/makerspaces and such! My local hackerspace is Garoa Hacker clube[1]; unfortunately I haven't had the time to participate much. If you're in São Paulo, I recommend a visit (for the 'Noite de Processing' (Processing nights)) on tuesday, and if you live here, what are you waiting for? :) (those spaces can always use more participation!) ... and maybe someday we'll meet there as well. Noite de Processing is also streamed online as well usually by the great Alexandre Villares. The next one is tuesday 28/11/2023![2] [1] https://garoa.net.br/ https://garoa.net.br/ [2] https://garoa.net.br/wiki/Noite_de_Processing https://garoa.net.br/wiki/Noite_de_Processing [3] On youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@GaroaHackerClubeSaoPaulo/streams https://www.youtube.com/@GaroaHackerClubeSaoPaulo/streams
- hardkorebob 3y agoThis is great! Love Brazil! Its an awesome location on this here fine rock. caras, vocês são incríveis Love from VA <3 Be Kind
- softwaredoug 3y agoSort of. I made professional connections. I was, in 2017, building a machine learning plugin for Elasticsearch (google Elasticsearch Learning to Rank). In a post about Slack's use of machine learning for search, I commented sharing the project. The Wikimedia Foundation search folks replied. We started collaborating professionally. As a consultant, I had access to many applicable use cases in the community. And Wikimedia of course had massive scale to make it bulletproof. We ended up co-creating the plugin - still relatively active for both OpenSearch and Elasticsearch.
- hardkorebob 3y agoPhenomenal! Love this very much. Good vibes sent to all of y'all.
- mikewarot 3y agoNo, I doubt I would... it seems HN is centered in Silicon Valley, and I'm in a suburb of Chicago, where there is a very low density of fellow programmers, hackers, etc. We're so spread out here, we had to invent the BBS to stay in touch.
- hardkorebob 3y agoI guess thats true. But Its a cool BBS we have nowadays tbh.
- sebnun 3y agoNo, but there's always a first time. If you are in Stockholm, hit me up at pablo at injavascript dot com
- hardkorebob 3y agoHell yes! I appreciate this.
- luthMan 3y agoNo, not yet. But I think that few users are from Europe, so it's not that easy to find people.
- hardkorebob 3y agoBest of luck! I'm not close but you may contact me for anything. Info in my profile.
- hoodwink 3y agoMet my cofounder on HN in 2017. We’ve since been working on a consumer saas app called Readwise for past 6 years.
- hardkorebob 3y agoThat is such great experience. Much success to ya'll.
- olegp 3y agoI met my co-founder as a result of him posting a Show HN and my comment on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1262380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1262380 We've been working together on Toughbyte, our second venture, for more than eight years now: https://www.toughbyte.com https://www.toughbyte.com
- hardkorebob 3y agoThis is so great! It's a great place and time to be alive in. I simply hope we can use these tools to bring peace to regions who never experience 1% of what the US quality of life has to offer. Let's start building code that makes war obsolete. And please let's save the idealism for the dreamers.