I remember whenever I would see more "nerdy" people in college talk about their interests casually and dork out in public about hobbies or movies they watched or games they've played that I've also played or shown interest for, my immediate reaction was never excitement that I found people who enjoyed what I did but instead a sort of nauseating embarrassment about their existence, even if they shared a high amount of interests as me. I would then attempt to not draw their attention and not blend with their social group, leaving numerous signs I wasnt interested in engaging more with them. In a few cases this left me as the outsider, but I found that actually to be preferable than to be associated with these people.

I thought maybe I was projecting insecurity about myself onto them and feeling what I thought other people felt and tried to push myself away from them to avoid similar judgement, but I can talk with my limited close friends in public about these things just fine without having the same feeling. I've wrestled a bit with why I cringe so heavily at hearing others talk and seemingly show enthusiasm in the things I do and why I wouldn't want to be friends with them, and the answer I eventually landed on was the performative nature. From my own experience, I understood what they were saying was banal and small, but portrayed jovially and overexerted in discussion undeservedly because of desiring the aesthetic of comradery and friendship over any meaningful attachment.

With every ounce of my being, I reject someone attempting to contort a discussion into convincing someone that you know enough shibboleths to be "cool", and for most of my life in school and early work thats all I saw the value of these "friends" for: the appearance of cooperation or shared interest over having any actual nuanced understanding of eachother or the topics we talk about.

Friendships draw on connections and bonds, and the type of person who needs to sell to me that they could understand my interests and thus could be friends at a surface level always rung as the lowest level of self serving needy pathetic loser. Mentioned in this thread, a huge driver for building friendship is "repeated casual contact", so seeing the experiment repeat multiple times at others dropping contact the second you go out of their vision just continued to echo how hollow and vain a lot of people "seeking friends" really are. At any mutual interest group, I still feel pretty similar. Sports clubs, bars, conventions all draw these crowds of people and it feels embarrasing to even be in the same area as them.

I lost my friends because I never really made many, and I dont think a lot of other people do either. Sure, age and location obviously strains communication with people, but thats just an excuse for why you dont want to put in work to continue a friendship, you can communicate to anywhere on the planet nearly instantaneously. You were never really friends to begin with and finished your transactional relationship, thats really all it ever really was. There's plenty of those to waste your time on if you want, though.