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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

I've tried to be open and generous to others during the holidays and it almost always results in serious awkwardness. There's a matchmaking problem here. I wish I could magically know who in the neighbourhood I could just knock on the door of and say hi and invite them to the extra seat at our table.

I've had luck at retirement homes. And holy cow if you have little kids, you are so welcome there (as long as you've met the administration and they feel comfortable with you). Joy disobeys the laws of thermodynamics and young children effortlessly generate joy in the elderly.

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When a bunch of us relocated to the Valley, we would do annual FriendsGiving and FriendsMas. As everyone has gotten older and busier, more stressed out or departed, that's kind of gone by the wayside.

Later on when I had my startup, my cofounder and our manager-of-everything would find a place for all of the orphans who were like we had been - without anything to do for the holidays because they, too, had recently moved away from their social circle and family. Everyone wins.

So I say: bid the awkwardness and putting yourself out there. I look back at that era fondly and yes, sometimes it was awkward, but mostly it was not. It was always worth it.

(Ironically, this year all of our plans fell apart, so my wife and I are on our own.)

If I wanted to do something like this, how would I find the orphans? I honestly don't know any grown-up orphans myself. There's definitely a matchmaking problem for finding certain people. Would I put up an ad on the Internet or in the streets saying, "Hey guys, holiday celebration happening, wanna invite all the orphans out there!" Or? Genuinely curious.

sorry for the lack of clarity; "orphans" here was our way of referring to employees who had moved across the country and had neither family [sometimes not in the US at all] nor social networks due to having moved cross-country to join us.

I support this, but offer a word of caution: When we did a Friendsgiving, word got out and friends invited friends and we ended up hosting about 100 people. It was chaotic fun, but also a big lesson. ;)

>I wish I could magically know who in the neighbourhood I could just knock on the door of and say hi and invite them to the extra seat at our table.

You should be doing that the second that you or they setup shop in the new neighbourhood.

It makes the christmastime awkwardness much less so!

Because yea, just assuming that a random stranger is going to be lonely for christmas (whether they live down the street from you or not) could make for a really awkward time, I agree!

For sure. My wife and I rented for a few years and bought our house this summer. We've done a lot better job meeting people. A lot of people just kind of want to be left alone and you've got to be able to take that in stride and move on to saying hi to the next neighbours.

"Kind of"? Nah, truly and really. Thats me. I am looking forward to christmas eve and the holidays afterwards being alone and having time for myself. Someone knocking on my door and offering to rescue me from this situation would be in for a very awkward situation indeed.

When you live in a friendly neighborhood, it doesn't have to be an awkward meeting. Our neighborhood is very often getting together casually for different things. Whenever a new neighbor moves in, one of us always goes and knocks on their door and says hello, gives them contact info, and mentions the next time we're getting together. If they show up or contact us, they're interested in being social. If they don't, they're welcome to their space. By the time holidays come around, we all know who might like to be together and who might not. No awkwardness either way.

The risk is if you talk to people are both lonely and annoying or toxic. They may never leave you alone!

Don't think of it as a risk.

Think of it as an opportunity to show somebody how to live their lives in a meaningful way that does not harm or annoy other people.

What is so horrible about awkwardness?

I've witnessed people talk about it like it's the plague.

It's just a bit of discomfort, and then you move on.

The point of social interactions is to connect with someone. If most of an interaction is awkward, you're not connecting. At that rate, you're just wasting time, and might as well do something alone.

In the context of TFA, connecting is about filling a need for social interaction. That cannot be filled by awkwardness.

If it's business or there's some other ulterior motive: sure.

I think the OP's motive here is to offer interaction to the other person who might be lonely. Not to make the OP feel good while not wasting time.

Yeah but the beginning of any relationship with anyone who's in any way different from you, is going to be awkward. If you push through that, you start to learn and get better at relating to that person, and they do the same. If you cut it off prematurely because it's awkward, then you just created the self-fulfilling prophecy that the entire relationship was awkward.

Awkwardness is due to lack of social graces, and communication skills. Perhaps one can train on these in the absence of other, live humans--read, for example, "How to Work a Room," or "The Fine Art of Smalltalk"--but ultimately, one must learn to navigate awkwardness.

In fact, I might go so far as to argue that the "connection" you're talking about is generated only by _resolving awkwardness_. Where there's none to resolve, there's no connection to be made. Relationships worn smooth by years of resolution aren't valuable in the same way.

You can effortfully apply all the social graces and make correct small talk, and still come away from an interaction thinking, “that was excruciating.” These situations can be even more awkward than when someone actually commits a faux pas.

I do phone befriending with AgeUK. Yes it’s awkward to begin with for them and you. But you might be the only person they get to speak to that week. Tough it out. It gets better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism

I wouldn't say there's something horrible about it. But if you're trying to invite someone to something, if there's social awkwardness, I think it usually means that they don't want to come, but they also don't know how to say no in a nice way because what kind of a weird person rejects generosity? Ignore the second part of that sentence, the focus should be on the first part, that it means they probably aren't interested in coming, and most likely also not interested in reciprocating the generosity.

It's not a bit if you have social anxiety.

I have social anxiety, and the prospect of awkwardness is sooooo much worse than the actual experience.

The prospect is positively crippling, but once I manage to push through that, things tend to work out. And when they don't it's not that bad. Then, next time, the prospect is again crippling, though perhaps a bit less.

Small steps.

You're talking about a group of people who has, statistically speaking at least, a lot more early life experience with awkwardness.

Many of us took the wrong lesson. Being clever, we learned to route around awkwardness instead of driving through it. This creates a whole other set of problems that are just as bad but easier to dismiss. Like not having deep connections with many people.

> There's a matchmaking problem here.

Absolutely agree. We need an efficient algorithm for matching based upon common interests, agreeability, and politeness.

I wonder if matchmaking algorithms from video games would come in handy for this? I think the League of Legends queue algo would be perfect for this.

Here's hoping I can break into plat.

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