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Comment by null_shift | Hacker News Reader

i am also very interested to know this as well.

the absence of “irl” community is something i have thought a lot about over the years.

seems nowadays most people hang out with either: 1. existing friends/family 2. coworkers 3. go online

with wfh, you lose #2. if you are a transplant, or never had #1, that doesn’t leave you with any options.

it seems inevitable that the future of socialization will be online and niche. and there will be a small minority that reject that trend and go “off the grid” to connect with nature.

i’m interested to research these topics/themes more thoroughly, if anyone can recommend further reading.

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Before the pandemic, I made a conscious effort to meet people by regularly attending a bunch of local meetups, over the course of two years. I made a ton of new acquaintances that way, and about 15 of those people ended up being part of my two main friend circles now.

I always thought of myself as an introvert before, but I just kept attending these things, and being present a bunch, not being too irritating of a person (I don't claim to be full of social graces, but overly irritating people did tend to be filtered out over time), and having activities to focus on instead of just talking at a lot of these (board games, scavenger hunts, movies, etc) helped me make those friendships over time.

Since the pandemic I've regressed quite a bit and haven't maintained a lot of the weaker friendships, but I still do things with those two main friend circles, mostly board game nights at their houses. Helps that everyone that attends is vaccinated, otherwise I'd feel less comfortable about it.

Anyway, it's possible if you make an effort, or at least it was before the pandemic (it probably still is possible, I'm just personally more cautious now).

Can you give me an example of the type of meetup you're attending? Will look for some in my area. Ty!

Sure. I'm only attending things online right now though. Here's a few of my past ones:

- Writing Meetup (talk about what you're writing right now, or share a passage and get feedback)

- Virtual Tour Meetup (a tour guide gives a presentation about a travel destination, past presentations are still up on their website): https://www.girltraveltours.com/

- Improv meetup - practice Improv with others online (now in person so online stopped and I don't live close enough to go to it)

- Game meetups - the local library and another group have regular Jackbox, Among Us, Gartic Phone, and BoardGameArena online game nights

- Book Club meetups - attended one discussing 'How to Avoid a Climate Disaster' by Bill Gates recently, but I've been to others as well

- History meetups - attended a few lectures about past events in history, like Shackleton's disaster of an exploration attempt in Antarctica (pretty crazy story), one on the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior, one on HH Holmes, etc.

- Virtual hack night or coding presentation events - Talking about something related to code, sometimes getting online to talk about and work on our own projects and keep each other accountable, etc.

Thanks! Those sound cool.

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