Google "Social Dining Apps"
Will you use it? I'd bet no. I know I thought it a good idea until I found one, and never used it.
It was specifically for finding people near you to eat lunch that day with. (Can't remember this exact one)
It's good in your head, socially awkward in practice.
Unlike dating apps, or large group apps like meetup.
See "We’re F*cked, It’s Over. Or Is It?" https://medium.com/the-mission/were-f-cked-it-s-over-or-is-i...
I find it interesting (honest) that children can just hang out, initially as strangers, without it being awkward. As adults, this is much harder. Why? Do we think too much as adults, such that it causes these situations to become awkward?
In essence, innocence does not exist for adults, there have been too many formative experiences so that they are no longer a blankish slate.
As an adult, there are many things I have to do. I need to go to work, I need to do laundry, dishes, child-care. But I am free to mostly do the things I want to do wherever I want to - I'm not trapped in school or camp or whatnot.
And when you, as an adult, do have free time, there aren't too many places an adult can go and just hang out, socially. The neighborhood bar is the only place I can think of where it's acceptable to just sit, do nothing, and socialize with whoever might be nearby.
Kids don't judge. As a kid, you can meet another kid and get straight in there asking the important questions in life and have no fear about being judged or even to care if you are judged.
Do you play Pokemon go? Bingo. Got an xbox? No? Ps4? Etc etc. Never ending list of stuff to keep asking until you hit the mark with no fear.
As an adult you have to be careful what to say for fear of offending them, or to give the wrong impression. Kids have none of these fears.
I think more than anything it's the amount children share in common. Adults are lame. The world is big. There's a lot to do and a lot of time to do it in. If you're a kid and you meet another kid odds are you live in the same town or at least region, go through the same school system, are roughly socioeconomically similar, and (thus) have a lot of things you can do together.
At work I really don't know much about my co-workers. I would go grab a beer and watch the game with someone if I knew they were interested, and from there we could hang out more -- but I don't. We spend all day near each other, at the EOD I just want to go home.
So my theory is that as adults most of us have fulltime jobs where we're always near people we don't spend much time with, and have no time to enter social circles afterwards.
$0.02
I can also extend with some classic negative examples, once you graduate school and live in the real world, I have nothing in common with my neighbors. What can I say to a 65 year old CFO, or a 50 year old warehouse owner/manager? The HVAC contractor across the street? "Wow those air conditioners sure blow a lot of air don't they?" Our kids might have a lot in common at the school as you state, but as parents I have very little in common with my neighbors.
The real difference, I'd say, is that kids are very easily bored. They get majorly annoyed if they don't have anything to do for more than three minutes, so they leave no time for awkwardness: they'll either pester everyone around them for attention until they either get a playmate or just get tired and start playing alone.
Plus, pretty much all kids know how to play pretend, so it doesn't take much for them to be playmates. Or at least it didn't take much in the far distant past of 2001.
This is my experience anyhow.
Between the sexes there's a unspoken expectation that if we like each other enough, we will end up together. If one or both parties are taken, it's kind of hard to form relationships, because you may not be willing to live up to that expectation (you actually want to be friends), the other person may think differently.
With the same sex, theres struggle for status. Most people are nice people, we don't want to come off and rude. But at the same time we have a inherent need to not be the lowest man on the totem poll. In order to climb the social ladder without being forceful and fighting for position, we end up doing weird desperate things. We want others to willing see us as better/more deserving, rather than forcing that opinion on them.
Really? I don't feel this way at all when meeting new people.
Trying to slight someone while being a contrarian with a wikipedia link is testament to psychological projection though.
I never said that they did.
True, but there's a huge fucking difference between being poor or destitute, and not being on the highest step of the social ladder among the people you're hanging out with.
> > but that doesn't mean they want to be better than everyone else.
> I never said that they did.
You said explicitly that people were doing weird things in order to climb the social ladder. Why keep climbing if you're happy where you are?
I don't think I'm the highest-ranked among the people I generally talk to, but I'm perfectly comfortable in my group - I'd say that many people around me are much higher, some are lower, and I haven't noticed any particular ladder-climbing among us.
Calm down, take a breather, no need to curse. I'd still understand what you're saying without it.
> not being on the highest step of the social ladder among the people you're hanging out with.
I said nobody wants to be the lowest on the totem pole. Not that everyone has to be at the top.
You said yourself:
> I don't think I'm the highest-ranked among the people I generally talk to, but I'm perfectly comfortable in my group
You see yourself as as existing in the middle. And you're fine with that it seems. But if someone saw themselves as existing at the bottom of their group, I guarantee they'd strive to change that. Climbing the ladder. Now, the top and the bottom of a group are relative to the person, but they exist and we as individuals orient ourselves to those points.
(Have we learned nothing from The Breakfast Club? :)
As a kid, I didn't have that many avenues to meet people beside school and when I met someone from outside of school, it was always awkward.