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Comment by huytersd | Hacker News Reader

It’s never looked like friendships I’ve seen in India but that is expected. This is a much more individualistic society.

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> This is a much more individualistic society.

I'm not sure what it's like in other cultures but the past 5 years in a "coming to age" process, I never realized how few people care about others.

I'm sure everybody has conflicting experiences but I have encountered multiple circles of acquaintances who never close that bridge/gap to become a "friend", going as far as not knowing your first name or what you do/anything about you after seeing you around and saying hello/goodbye for years.

When I was younger, I never thought being an adult would be like this socializing wise.

I'm not sure what your expectations growing up were but I remember always hearing "making friends as adults is hard". This might be somewhat alleviated by having kids as a forcing function (becoming friends with your kid's friend's parents because of the amount of time they spend together) but it's pretty much been proven true. Making friends is a huge time investment, especially as an adult when you have more responsibilities that take up that time.

> I'm not sure what your expectations growing up were but I remember always hearing "making friends as adults is hard".

What's weird to me is... does it have to be?

For example, I've been in plenty of situations where all it would take is somebody to turn to me and say "so... tell me about yourself. blah blah blah, wow, me too! here's my number, we should hang out sometime".

I can't even get people to do that lol

People just seem preoccupied with themselves/don't seem to care. But then I turn it into something against myself. Why do these people have other friends/care about others but don't want to extend their circle to include me? Is it something about me? Then you start thinking "wow... this person is rude, we've been around each other for 3+ years and they've never once asked me my name/anything about me" lol

I feel like you tried to explain this to a high schooler as "something that may happen later in your adult life" they would say... "there's no way/I don't believe you"

I remember telling my oldest kid that it was highly unlikely she would still be friends with her best friend in high school after high school. She didn’t believe me. About five years later she asked me if I remembered that conversation and said that I was right.

I told my kids this in elementary school and they were surprised.

Conversely my wife is still friends with all her high school friends.

> For example, I've been in plenty of situations where all it would take is somebody to turn to me and say...

Do you turn to them and say that?

In my experience, coming up with the opening line is the hardest part. Once you've determined some common ground to start off on, it's easy to keep going. Meeting at some sort of shared interest environment alleviates this.

Without that, it's basically the same as going to an LLM and saying "Hello, how are you?"

To be honest, I have a few excuses to this.

1. Once you've tried a few times and failed at almost 100% to have anything fruitful come from it, it's easy to blame yourself/want to stop trying

2. If you are going to be near me for 3 years+ on and off at a soccer game + post game drinks or whatever and not even put the effort in to know my name, I can't help but feel I would come off as the young kids say as "thirsty" and "unable to read the room" asking somebody uninterested to be a friend "hey... please be my friend!"

100% agreed. I have different expectations from an Indian friend vs an American/Canadian friend. That said I make friends very easily and there's certainly a lot of culture sharing going on, which I really enjoy. For instance some of my westerns friends are now used to just showing up at my doorstep before even sending me a text message, now that's what I was used to growing up. I know this is a very silly thing but to me it matters a lot, because I hate the "let's plan charade". Also, I really like that in the western culture there's no unnecessary pressure to do things in group. For instance, I have very specific eating habits and I don't usually eat after 5pm. When I'm invited at a western friend for dinner and I tell them upfront that I won't be eating anything they don't mind, they get it. On the other hand, the Indian friends keep forcing me to try things, it takes them a couple of tries before they realize I won't listen and then they stop doing it. It is really annoying but I always have to face that with any new Indian friend.

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