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Comment by Shaddox | Hacker News Reader

Any tips or advice for this? Preferably tuned for someone who has no friends.

The biggest advice is don't go out expecting to make a close, personal, tell-all-your-secrets, go on holidays together friend. Finding a close friend is almost as hard as finding a longterm romantic partner, save for the fact that you don't have to exclude everyone with close friends from your search.

Instead, just focus on finding large social groups you can join without too much pressure -- anything where ten or twenty people get together on a regular basis. It could be anything from exercise classes to night school to volunteer programs to church groups to boardgame meetup groups to renfaire and LARPing to poetry nights at a coffee shop.

Your goal here isn't to find your soul-friend, it's just to make a lot of friendly acquaintances. People you can talk to about your mutual interests, who will engage in the standard small talk about work and family with whom you can complain and sympathize for five minutes or an hour at a time.

Then, settle in for the long haul of having a social circle. Figure out how much you can commit to -- don't try to do everything if you can really only manage a couple of days a week or month. If you want and can make time for daily or nightly activities with ten different groups, great; if you can only handle one or two groups meeting one or a few times a month each, do that instead.

Again, this isn't necessarily going to result in any friends who will help you bury bodies, but a large circle of casual friends is nothing to sniff at.

My sister shared a tip she uses when moving to a new town. Say yes to every social engagement no matter what.

I have gotten a lot of leverage out of being religiously involved (not just showing up Sunday morning, but showing up for workdays and midweek bible studies), sports leagues when moving to new locations and hosting occasional dinner "parties"/potlucks.

I like to throw a Christmas in July potluck where I cook a couple of turkeys (bought at Thanksgiving and freeze until July so they are $0.99/lbs), make five lbs of mashed potatoes and gravy and rely on guest to fill in the rest of the details. Then I invite everyone I am friends with or might want to be friends with, neighbors, coworkers, people I met from sports leagues and church etc.

I also recommend just introducing yourself to everyone you can when you move to a new town or neighborhood. Your physical neighbors, the clerks at the stores nearby, the bus driver, the postal carrier, etc etc.

People might think you're a bit strange, this day and age, and the simple introduction isn't going to blossom into any bosom friendships, but it can transform you from a stranger to a neighbor, and vice versa for the people around you, so you don't feel like an outcast in your own home.

Forget dating: First step is getting yourself some local friends. This means joining social activities nearby. Are you interested in board games? Start showing up to the local board games meets. Do you like cooking? Take a cooking course. Dancing is so easy it's almost cheating: go to local balls or join a class, it's a ton of fun and you'll meet many people. Think of anything that can be done or taught socially that you might find enjoyable, I guarantee you'll find social events related to it and odds are that you'll be well received because communities like this always benefit from new faces.

I've been going to a twice-a-month board game night, and... what now? People come, some bring games, we play some and then everyone leaves. What am I missing?

That’s it. You’re riding the bike. You said you wanted to ride a bike. Keep doing it because seeing those same faces regularly is slowly building some rapport between you. You’ll naturally pick up some details about them, hear their likes and dislikes, past experiences, etc. Soon enough you’ll know enough about them to advance the arrangement to friendship. Congrats, achievement unlocked.

Is that really a viable strategy though? You're talking about spending months, if not a year or more, for a chance to make a friend. Then once you've established a group of friends there is an even smaller chance that you will meet a potential romantic partner. This in turn leads to an even smaller chance that the relationship works out.

It seems to me that approach could easily take decades. I'm not sure that's a realistic strategy.

Well, building friendships is something that takes at the very least a few months and that's with very regular contact. Generally speaking friendship usually comes from a simple factor: it breeds from familiarity and that takes time.

This is why it's fairly important to be doing something you find enjoyable by itself, otherwise you'll get bored of it before friendships have a chance to blossom.

Do you have hobbies?

My main two hobbies are music and D&D. I go out and play at open mic nights and have met friends there, and I have also gone to gaming stores to play D&D and made friends there. Since the folks there share a common interest with me, it made it much easier to meet new people and make friends.

EDIT: keep in mind, those don't have to be your hobbies. But there are hobbies like that that can allow you to meet new people.

Think through your hobbies that might lend themselves to meetups: tabletop/card gaming? cycling? rock climbing?

Beyond that Meetup.com is a wealth of resources.

Beyond that, maybe try out new hobbies that are social. Improv, casual sports like kickball (even if like me you aren't particularly into them), hiking groups, etc.

This about it this way: what do you do when you are not with other people? Is that something you could do with people and people would want to be part of? If so, you are in a good spot making friends and having relationships.

Get involved in things where there is opportunity to meet nearby socially-adept well-connected people. Unlearn any prejudices you have about what kind of person you get along with.

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