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Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

"it's just hard to meet people in the first place"

If it's hard, it's usually a psychological difficulty rather than a lack of opportunity.

Unless you live somewhere exceptionally remote, you're usually surrounded by people and opportunities for meeting them are quite frequent. You could strike up conversations most anywhere: from streets to bus stops to parks to bars to dance and social clubs to special interest groups, work, cafes, parties, conferences, and so on.

Usually, though, most people don't make the effort, for a variety of reasons ranging from fear to awkwardness and lack of social skills.

Once you meet people, though, you have to go further and cultivate acquaintances in to friends, and lots of people fail to do that as well. Even after a friend is made, however, it's still a challenge to get closer and then to maintain the friendship, which again people often fail to do.

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I don't think "striking up conversations from anywhere" is the way to go to find long-term friendship. Friendships work best when the lives of both parties (assuming over 30 years old) are in sync: this can be either similar situations, or common life threads to talk about. Outside that, the energy required to maintain friendship goes up dramatically.

For people over 30+ some common threads are same-aged children, similar pets, common hobbies, etc. It's just easier, and let's assume that my life is busy enough that I don't have the energy to work in new relationships that don't have a certain flow to it. It's not about fear or lack of social skills, because at some point we are ALL going to be awkward in a conversation and this is easily forgiven, especially since by the time we hit 30+ we are a bit more patient.

Personally, I've found that creating a small group is the best way to find new friends and the energy to cultivate it is spread out amongst the group. Inviting new people into the common circle is MUCH easier. It's easier to keep interesting conversation with 3 people than 2. But with more people comes the problems of scheduling and opportunities become slimmer.

Similar-minded people looking for friendship is easier than doing it alone.

How do you find out if you're "in sync" with someone? Conversations. How do you start that common circle, how do you pick people to invite to it? Fresh blood requires that someone talk to the strangers. And "anywhere" you've got at least one thread in common: You're in the same place, at the same time, for some reason. Often similar reasons.

Now sure, not every conversation with a stranger will turn into a life long connection between soulmates. Some of them you'll never talk to again. And sure, sharing the work between a circle of like-minded friends can help once you've gotten that like-minded circle of friends established.

But I have to say - some my best friendships have formed when a relative stranger struck up a conversation with me over a game. Or a job. Or a shared technical interest. Or, yes, by just being in the same damn place at the same damn time.

Just out of curiosity, how many new people would you say you talk to on a regular day, and how many of them become friends?

I'm probably just picky, because I can't imagine making a single friend over a year using that scattershot approach.

As I noted later in my comment "unless one makes a concerted effort to seek out their tribe," which agrees with your point. That stated, this being a technical forum, many of us are Myers-Briggs (if you believe in it) INTJ types -- so yes, we do potentially lack the social skills. Moreover, I reflect upon my own adulthood, where for much of it I have risen before dawn to work, skipped lunches, returned home somewhere in the evenings, by and large have been unable to take vacations, and find my weekends and downtime dedicated to family activities. I don't believe this to be outside the norm, and in fact I'd say in the details, that I have it better than most. So I stand by my assertion that while it is possible to meet plenty of people, most of us adult types are constrained by expectations and obligations, leaving us by and large, lonely and aloof.

I actually do live in a fairly remote place, pmoriarty, but your comment has me reflecting on culture. Seattle, where I regularly visit, is known for the "Seattle Freeze," whereby people are insular and guarded. I spent a lot of years there in the tech world and have no relationships to show from it; just business. Perhaps you are in a locale where the culture is more open and welcoming, where people are more willing to engage in conversations with strangers?

I moved to Seattle from the east coast about a year ago. I'm heading back because I don't fit in here. It's me, not the city.

I spent a lot of time working remotely. Bouncing up and down the northeastern corridor. I found a way to get acclimated to a city rather quickly. Find your tribe, friend the service staff, and it generally grows from there. Make yourself that you're a regular, and a good person.

I'm not an outdoorsy person, I'm not a "chill" person. What I enjoy wasn't common fare. That's not meant as a knock. The closest I found here, was the LGBTQ community. But there was a bit of trepidation with me being a software developer, i.e. causing problems for the city.

There is the Seattle freeze. But it's also we're busy and there is not that much in common. It's important to try and not be negative. Blaming the city is not beneficial. Maybe the city just isn't right for you. What do you want from your city, where you live?

I will say I did find it's more insular. My usual fare of trying to join a conversation at a bar didn't work. Saying hi, was not well received. I also think I had a cloud of negativity, from heavy job dissatisfaction that limited a positive response. My few friends here. Were gained from bartenders a bouncer, and someone I met at a mixer.

One other thing I'd note. Is I try and perform outside of work, event hosting, dj'ing, etc. I tried talking to promoters but got stood up a lot. Make an appointment to meet up and no show.

"for much of it I have risen before dawn to work, skipped lunches, returned home somewhere in the evenings, by and large have been unable to take vacations"

This is certainly nowhere close to the norm in europe. I only know a couple of people who work more than 40 hours a week (37.5 is standard in the UK), and they definitely take vacations.

Completely true, take everything I said and reverse it for Europe. But I'm referring to life in These United States, where we don't have health care, we don't have vacation, we don't have maternity leave, we have very little public transportation... ok, I'll just stop before I get out of control.

We have all of those things. We just have less of a "my neighbors should pay for it" viewpoint.

It's actually the exact opposite. You have more of a "my neighbors should pay for it" view. That's why you object to paying taxes so much. You want all the benefits of living in an advanced society, but you want someone else to pay for it.

This is simply observed by noting that most people, in both countries, actually work and pay taxes. Therefore, in Europe, most people are paying for both their own services and for those of people who can't afford it. That's an attitude of "I'll pay for my neighbor" not "my neighbor should pay".

Yes in the strictest sense of the word "we" have it. If my neighbor can't pay for it and everyone else refuses to pay for it, my neighbor doesn't have it. If my neighbors have health insurance but can't afford the copay so they have to let smaller problems become life threatening, they effectively don't have it.

It's like you are celebrating a system that didn't take much out of you to give seriously dehydrated people water while conveniently neglecting the result that giving them a bottle of water either made them destitute or prolonged their lives by a small amount. You also conveniently neglect that many first world nations manage to have universal healthcare and spend less per person than us. I will say this though, if you are rich there are very few better places to be for healthcare than America. Hoorah, what a great system; what a great quality of life for everyone!

It's not entirely clear that American healthcare is much better, even if you can afford it, unless you're talking about, like, stratospheric levels of wealth.

Confusing then that the US government pays more per capita for healthcare than the UK.

I'm assuming most readers are in an American context where, unfortunately, I don't think what he's describing is that unheard of.

Frankly, I am also by nature an introverted and guarded person, but I have found my life really enriched by consciously working past that to talk to people.

I live in Seattle, and I’d say that your crazy lifestyle is why you didn’t make friends here - and that it’s probably the same cause for most people who complain about the Seattle Freeze. You worked all day and hung out with family all weekend and an amazing friendship didn’t climb down your chimney? How baffling, must be the city culture to blame. (I moved here for work out of college, and made plenty of friends - by socializing in the evenings).

I've lived in six different US States (in the South, East, Northeast, Midwest, Southwest, and Northwest) and Washington State definitely stands out as having the largest proportion of socially inept people. The general pattern seems to be that they don't know how to make polite casual conversation with strangers and are either just rude or completely overshare.

Some of us end up oversharing, because we have not run into people who can have a conversation in years, and are feeling deprived. ;-)

true, I hadn't thought of that

I'm an introvert and am an NF type, and I'd generally agree with you. It's not the city, it's how you approach it. If you don't have friends find something to do and they will come. But you have to have the courage to make the first move. If you don't, who will?

I agree with your sarcasm, particularly as it pertains to Seattle. However, my vibe of Vancouver is different. Having lived in Vancouver and visited Seattle many times for concerts and so on, I can say that Vancouver maintains a sort of freeze even with a well above average intent to expand socially. I think because such a large percentage of people (out of necessity or not) meat some of the criteria in the parent comment, it's hard to strengthen. Getting anyone (except in certain niches) out to do something is like trying to pass pro-choice laws. When you do get it to happen, they'll bail (colloquially called the BC bail) at the last second.

^This! Seattle is overflowing with welcoming spirits like newfoundglory. It's your friendless, self-deserving, crazy lifestyle that's the problem. Got your own opinion? You can GTFO! /s

Disclaimer: My two Seattle visits were both welcoming and pleasant, and I've never met newfoundglory. Had I, I likely would have found them to be quite friendly.

INTP/J here. I’ve found most strong friendships created over over past decade we’re with very, very similar Myers-Briggs types.

Wanna be friends?

Also INTP/J. Up for it. How does one connect on HN?

myer briggs is basically meaningless

Yup, it's just modern astrology. A bunch of stuff that is mostly kinda true about almost everybody or things that people want to believe about themselves. A lot of it is honestly just ego stroking. "You're usually not a risk taker, except when it's important." It's embarrassing how many people fall for it.

I don't know about that. You just shouldn't strap more meaning onto it than that it's a survey that gives you a qualitative description of the answers you gave to it -- people have some innate attraction to such things and I find it hard to criticize them for it. I just don't think it's appropriate to use for career counseling, etc.

Educational Testing Service got interested in it long ago and then dumped it. The National Academy of Sciences did a huge project on improving human performance for the US military back in the 1980's, and they put it in the not useful category. What would you expect for an assessment developed by a team of two with no background in assessment?

I would extend your evaluation to say that it is not appropriate for use on others, but if you think that it helps you assess yourself, knock yourself out.

@mathperson - pureGuano covers my view of it too, which is why I added that caveat to my message. It's certainly indicative of personality, but not all encompassing. It's pseudo-science, but interesting and a starting place to understand someone.

You can't even consistently get the same results for the same person.

that applies to a lot of medical tests as well

How many of those purport to measure innate characteristics of the subject?

I'm well aware.

I think mathperson is referring to the fact that 'big 5' is the new personality type test that psychology researchers seem to take more seriously.

My understanding is that it's a lot more, I forget the word. reliable or repeatable? I mean, two different big5 tests are more likely to give you the same answer than two different MBTI tests.

I'm actually not familiar with this exam-I'll look into it!

Meh, it's a lens. The older I get, the more I appreciate different lenses and how subjective everything ultimately is. A lot of STEM-types chafe at this, and cling to empiricism as a bedrock in the tumult of human experience, but at the end of the day whether an idea has value to me is entirely orthogonal to its scientific basis or lack thereof.

You know, if you are going to assert something contrary to common belief, you really should include some arguments. Until you do, I am going to simply assume you're mistaken.

This jumps out at me on airplanes. You used to strike up conversations with the people next to you, unless they were sleeping or obviously working on something. Now they're wearing headphones, and it feels intrusive to talk to them.

Being crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers in a capsule is stressful for most people. Some deal with the stress by chit-chattering with others to distract themselves. Others just want to escape into their own heads and block out the uncomfortable surroundings.

I don't think much has changed, except now more people use headphones and cell phones to signal that they're in the latter group. Previously they would have nodded and said "mm-hmm, oh wow" a lot.

Single serving friends

One cup friends.

I live in Seattle and everyone else on my daily commute is immersed in their smartphone, tablet, or laptop.

This is my experience as well. People in Seattle even when not on devices are very anti-social. When I was in the midwest, random people invited me to BBQ's and social events all the time.

This is known as the Seattle Freeze: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze

Seattle is insanely difficult to interact with people and make friends. My take if you're curious: http://qr.ae/TbSyBG

Seattle is the home of a deep insularity.

Isn't it the same for any large city?

It might be but I won't make general claims based on a single sample.

Same for NYC, and SF.

So I go up to the pharmacist. He's an older gent about my dad's age. We know each other since I pick up my script for sleep issues every month.

"How you doing today?"

"Oh, you know how it is." He gives me a weak smile. I can tell he feels worn down from the daily grind.

I pick up my script, then think of a way to keep chatting.

"Hey, this is going to sound weird, but I also have <foo> medical condition. Do you have any advice on getting that treated?"

I have no idea why this made sense to me, but it was something like "Pharmacists fill scripts, and they also see prescriptions daily, so they know which illnesses are treated by which medicines, so therefore this is totally not a weird thing to do."

He gives me this super surprised look and stays mostly quiet. I say "I should see a doctor huh?" and he says yeah. I walk away feeling like a dummy.

I didn't mind at all, and I'm not afraid to try to make new friends. But now instead of this random person thinking of me as a neighbor (he always called me by name) I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm weird. And I am.

The point is, I don't really care about being weird. I don't think I'm alone in this. But I stay quiet because it damages social relationships to express myself in odd ways. It's better to be on a cordial first-name basis than have an arms-length-but-personal experience with them.

The opportunities you mention for meeting people are really not as frequent as you make it seem. And it's unclear what to say to force a conversation. Yes, some people have this skill. Some are also naturally good looking. But seeing as this is Hacker News, I think the audience might be closer to my side of things.

The reason I wrote this was that you mention there are all these opportunities. But going over in my mind, I can't see a single way to talk to that guy that isn't socially weird. He's at work. He just wants to get his job done and move on to the next customer. I don't know anything that could make him laugh. Asking about his day or asking him to tell me what it's like to be a pharmacist would be seen as yet another frustrating thing to deal with at work. And there are other people in line behind me, so this is an imposition on everyone else.

But those people are opportunities too, right? I could just turn around and start chatting them up. Except not really. It's the same for everyone else in life: We're all busy, all dealing with our own things. And the older you are the busier you get.

All of this is to say, you can live in one of the biggest cities in the country and still feel completely isolated and alone. I know. And maybe this comment will put it into context that it's not really their fault. It's just the shape of the situation.

I usually hack on my projects at the mall on a couch, and end up meeting quite a lot of people. But only if they happen to be hacking away on something too, and eventually I ask them about it. But that seems rather an uncommon situation. So I'm wondering "Outside of work and family, where would other hackers have excuses to meet people in daily life?"

Even now, the smart thing is to stay quiet and not post this. You're told to stay quiet in a thousand ways by the society around you.

I'm self-employed and I have a rented desk at the local WeWork coworking space. I go there when I feel like getting out of the house to get some work done.

Using the coworking space is a surprisingly good way to meet people. Obviously the guy locked in an office, headphones on, hammering out code should be left alone -- but there will be many people sitting in the common areas, chatting with their buddies. They might be drinking the free beer on tap. They probably have a startup, open source project, etc. that they're passionate about and would be happy to tell you about.

I co-own/run a co-working space and always enjoy opportunities to talk with the others here about our work and life outside of work. I've been in a shared/open office my entire working life and many of my friends have come through these environments.

I think consistently seeing each other daily for whatever period gives you a good chance to find common interests, incorporate social outings, etc.

attempting to start a friendship (or more) with someone who is serving you is one of the more risky avenues. if you're both on the same page, it can be totally fine and work out. unfortunately, most of the time you are just another customer to them and you just put them in a situation where they have to figure out how to gracefully decline while still doing the deferential customer service dance.

They are also busy working, and are probably not in frame of mind for chit-chat.

It doesn't sound especially weird to me, I'm sure a lot of people ask pharmacists such things to avoid seeing a doctor. I've done it myself. Pharmacist advice is even a thing I've seen advertised. It's possible these things are just different where I am.

In any case, I don't see that asking a pharmacist about a medical-related topic would be interpreted as a friend request.

Great post. So many things you wrote are so correct about human interaction in a city.

The point is that you are actually meeting the pharmacist. You're there every week. That's an opportunity.

Say you wanted to talk to him more, I would not be trying to act like more of a customer by talking about medical conditions, I would be talking about things he might be interested in, or mention something else that I'm interested in, or something that anybody might be interested in (weather/current news/sporting event), or something related to the current situation. Or even just throw something out there - "you look like you might know about <certain thing>, my mom has one and was just asking me about it". Even if you're wrong they'll be interested in why you might think that about them which can move onto other subjects. "You remind me of <such-and-such person>". "Hey, you remind me of my dad, what's a good present to get someone like you?". Use your imagination and you can come up with a million of these.

You could even just volunteer something about your life. "Nice day today, I'm in a good mood because I'm going on a trip away soon". If he's interested in talking he'll continue. Most people who are working boring jobs will want to chat with a customer that isn't annoying.

I think it depends on what you want to happen in the end. Do you want to meet this pharmacist out as a friend or more, or do you just want more small talk?

Small talk is, by definition, impersonal. If you want the relationship to be personal, you need to transition from small talk. Either find a common interest or show interest in his interests.

TBH I find small talk pretty irritating and mostly enjoy being impersonal in the city. There's too many people to be friends with everyone, and I don't have time for many friends as it is. "How are you?" - "I'm good thanks"!

Mostly when I do make the effort to chat, people are receptive.

OT: FWIW, in UK (and France, Spain, Kenya as I recall from visits) pharmacists do prescribe to a limited degree. All the local pharmacies to me [except supermarket pharmacies] have small consulting areas with a closed door where you can chat about your ailments.

NHS I think are keen to encourage use of pharmacists for minor ailments.

Slightly OT: where is it so weird to ask a pharmacist for advice? In places I've lived in it's either reasonably typical or not typical but within the realm of expected things.

You’re basically describing the whole field of small talk. It’s perfect for stuff like this. And then if he’s interested you gradually progress the conversation.

> So I'm wondering "Outside of work and family, where would other hackers have excuses to meet people in daily life?"

Play! Or, well, hobbies in general.

I've met people online through games and technical social forums, some of whom I later grabbed drinks with after we found out we were in the same area, and later still ended up working with several.

Nowadays I'm into boardgames - if you plopped me in a random city with no other contacts and a need to socialize, I'd maybe check online for boardgame bars. Maybe try to strike up a conversation about a boardgame another group's playing that looks interesting, or invite someone who's just grabbing food to join in. Or look up shops that might host the occasional MTG tournament - I don't generally play MTG, but it's a common enough game there's been a circle that plays it at every job I've had, and a tournament settings by it's very nature is going to force at least a minimal amount of interaction between complete strangers.

One of my friends is into drones - building them, racing them, the works. So there's racing events he goes to and meets people at, socializing during the downtime. More interactions of "oh, I recognized XYZ that you did online!" (common forums, videos, etc.) Also hosts a monthly movie night - a relatively easy excuse to get to know people better that he might only kind-of barely know at work.

Paintball seems like another option I should try picking up sometime. I bet paintball fields have some kind of open-to-all events to try and drum up business.

> But I stay quiet because it damages social relationships to express myself in odd ways. It's better to be on a cordial first-name basis than have an arms-length-but-personal experience with them.

Does it, and even if it does, is it really better? Extensive online socializing has made me very comfortable with being frenemies or worse with trolls etc. - worst case scenario, me and whomever I'm conversing with both find out we have better things to do than talk to the other party - and best case scenario, you've found something to bind over for a lifetime. Win/win.

(I realize this can be much easier to say than to internalize, but I wanted to plant this idea.)

> Even now, the smart thing is to stay quiet and not post this.

Then intelligence is overrated.

> You're told to stay quiet in a thousand ways by the society around you.

Then those parts of society are also overrated. Fuck 'em. Keep talking - how else are the other weirdos who also don't know when to shut up going to find you? :P

>If it's hard, it's usually a psychological difficulty rather than a lack of opportunity.

Sure, but that doesn't mean it's easier. In my experience, it's the other way around, really. I am rather good at operating tools, and tools to deal with the physical barriers to socialization are usually pretty easy to operate.

The psychological side of that, though, is... more difficult. There are tools there, too, but in my experience, those tools are much less well understood.

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