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PermanentReset
@PermanentReset

There's this weird societal standoff happening where we're all aware we need more in-person human interaction, to rekindle human connection, and to build genuine friendships and healthy communities, but as soon as it leaves the realm of abstract thought we all collectively shrug our shoulders and go "I dunno, hope someone figures out how to do that."

And, man, this whole "I'll be in on the community as soon as it exists" mentality is just not how community works. I mean, it's blatantly not. I get it. We're all tired, we're in a low trust culture. People are messy and not always easy to get along with. Trust me, I get it. But at the same time we can't constantly be yearning for more and never acting in an attempt to make that change. Or I guess we can if we're actually content for there to never be any change.

Yeah, meeting up with your friends once a week is, sometimes, a bummer. Sometimes you want to just spend Friday evening doing nothing. You're exhausted, you've had a shit day, you don't have the energy to be personable. Do it anyway. Go be exhausted with company, and let your friend be exhausted in your company.

Make clubs, go on hikes, get into TTRPGs, go to the bar if you can afford it, have dinner parties, pick up board games, play Smash Bros on the couch.

I dunno man, I keep seeing posts and comments of unanimous consent that we're all very lonely. Tons of people in one digital space all shouting for friends. Why not make friends with each other? Start a discord, start talking, share weird memes, play some video games, have discord movie nights. It's not the same but it's a start. Who knows where that can lead?

Anyway, just some thoughts. As the guy who's weirdly always the glue of the friend group, it can be tiring at times but it's usually worth it. Maybe the discord will die, maybe nobody will join. Close the server and try again. Maybe friend night will be pushed to every two weeks. Maybe once a month. Keep it going. Expand it. Be welcoming. Give it a try.


mathsbian
@mathsbian

Big discord I’m a moderator in that lost momentum a couple years ago? Admin has suddenly decided we are GOING to force it to life again and has been making a bunch of plans to make sure things stay rolling along once we’re ready to kick it back off. I haven’t been excited like this since it became so much less active.


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in reply to @PermanentReset's post:

my struggle is i recognize that in person social interaction is really important to have, but i'm still taking as many covid precautions as i have been for years still, and figuring out what's even safe or comfortable for me is a huge part of what makes it hard for me

A little surprised to see how the response to this post mostly centered around Covid when I don't think that was the intended message. Have been waffling off and on about contributing my 2 cents, but I think my circumstance is different enough from most of the feedback, so here I am!

Tons of people in one digital space all shouting for friends. Why not make friends with each other? Start a discord, start talking, share weird memes, play some video games, have discord movie nights. It's not the same but it's a start. Who knows where that can lead?

This is the part that speaks to me the most and is also the hardest for me to manage. Not to get too into specifics, but I semi-recently had a falling out with some people very close to me that culminated in me, essentially, losing all the social groups I'd been building up for 15 years. I lost my closest online (and in-person) friends, and I've found myself pretty much alone in online spaces for the first time since 2009. Which is... difficult. The internet isn't the same. The people in it are not the same. I'm not the same.

I still have some friends, but hopping into their already fully-established friend groups feels awkward and alienating, like I'm a circle trying to find a space in a pattern of triangles. I don't know how to throw myself into a group of strangers anymore, because I have aged out of the usual Groups of Strangers and don't really want to hang out with a bunch of 16-20 year olds.

The thought of building everything back up from 0 is scary. Even without recent personal experiences and anxieties holding me back, I've never been the kind of person who can just hop up to people unprompted and go "hey let's be friends! here's my discord info!"

I don't know how to start over in my 30s. :(

It has been an interesting exercise in the difference between what I thought I said vs what people understood me to have said, or at least how whatever I said is applied to their daily lives for sure. Still, I think the COVID and in-person communal concerns are valid, and that branching path of the conversation is good.

That said, your comment is definitely more in line with what my thoughts while writing the post were. Specifically that there's a bunch of us gathering in our pseudo-anonymous online communities, shouting into the void about needing friends with people who have already proven to have at least something in common with us (whether that be an interest in a particular subject or just simply knowing that cohost exists), and the response to that is, usually, some form of looking right past the potential that's right in front of you.

I'm not saying the answer is to try to make friends with everyone who interacts with your posts by any means, but if you see the same people pop up fairly regularly, you like their stuff, they seem to like and comment on your stuff, there may be a "there" there that can be pursued into an eventual friendship. Do that enough and, over time, you have your own little community. Maybe it starts online, but maybe it doesn't have to always stay that way. Who knows what the future holds?

I think this especially applies to those of us in our 30s though. This is the age where friend groups you had when you were younger really start to fall apart. Life gets busy, or you grow into different people with incompatible personalities or views of the world, or simply someone has a kid and now they just don't have the time to hang out anymore. I think this adult loneliness, bad enough on its own but conflated by modern work culture, is its own sort of silent epidemic. But it's one where there are, at least, some steps that can be taken to mitigate the problem.

The issue is, we know how busy we all are. We don't want to butt into other people's busy lives. And it's hard to distinguish between someone who is simply busy and doesn't have the time or mental energy to provide a proper response to something you've said and someone who just isn't that interested in hanging out but is being polite anyway - especially over the internet. There are definitely a lot of hurdles, and I'm sympathetic to that. But at the same time the hurdles can never be jumped if we don't try.

None of this is directed at you, specifically, of course. You just so happened to pick at the bit of my brain that had more thoughts to spill out. As a guy in his 30s who is seeing his own friend group slowly drift apart, though, I am sympathetic.

Glue can't hold anything together if it isn't present.