I don't think I've ever met someone online and later met them in person. Except for dating sites.
It seems more difficult to make friends the older I get. I think at least part of it is that everyone is so busy.
It seems more difficult to make friends the older I get. I think at least part of it is that everyone is so busy.
I couldn't help but pattern-match to this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUlxth701GM
I am not that into killing hornets right now, but I will be moving to the countryside soon. I might hit you up later this month to talk about killing them, if that's alright.
But I haven’t met anyone online that I have any in person contact with in a long long time. Although I haven’t really made any friends online in ages either, most of my communication with strangers seems to be one off messages like these HN comments that have no real hope of ever developing into anything else. I guess friendships develop in chat rooms rather than comment boards, which is how I became friends with the people I did become friends with.
It’s definitely a lot harder the older I get and it’s quite frustrating. People are busier, I’m busier, makes it hard. Even just going out, the majority of people are a lot younger than me, which is fine for hanging out (I hung out with people my age when I was the same age as the people I see now), but I find it extremely difficult to build a deeper connection or relationship with them, I guess I feel like the creepy older guy sometimes so I stay distant. Double so for dating. It doesn’t help that I have anxiety, I suppose. My core friend group are great and we do hang out, but yeah, they’re busy, most have kids too, which makes it very hard to just casually meet up.
The drawback is, long term retention is not high in such a location. Its not nice to see people with whom you connected so well leave. But its endlessly better than some stale rural place where you either have really close people from childhood/school years, or you are pretty lonely.
Many would be surprised to find out the friendships they made weren’t really friendships after all but mere acquaintances even if they felt like intimate friendships..
I am tied to several communities where there is a whole lot of overlap between people online and in-person activities. For instance, I am involved with a long-running folk festival in Texas that has a large community, and many of those people are on social media. It's a fairly regular thing that I meet people at that festival who I'd previously only met in online spaces.
Similarly, I play music and I rock climb. I'm also involved in several forums for those activities. I've met up with quite a few folks over the years who I only knew from those forums, mostly because both those activities often require other people to participate.
Your point that "everyone is busy" is correct, I think. The big factor is what people are busy doing and finding the folks who are already busy doing things you would like to do.
I was also part of an online trivia group for a long time and met a lot of people from that many times (and married and divorced one of them).
I assume similar things still happen these days in Reddit and Facebook groups but I seem to have drifted away from that kind of online activity.
For me, it’s intolerance. I have a low threshold for bullshit, the (intentionally?) inarticulate, and stubbornness in conversation.
I’ve kept some friends. We’ve physically separated, but we stay in touch and meet in person. Making new ones is indeed challenging.