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Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?

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Re: Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?

#61

Post by km3r »

ellisd wrote: post #19

Raves, particularly ones that are designed to be “transformative” like Lightning in a Bottle in California. Music festivals with camping are magical ways to build community and inspire yourself around other like minded and curious people. I never attended these events until a near death experience prioritized my love of dancing in my early 30. Now nearly 10 years later I'm even more convinced this is the way.

Lightning in a Bottle was amazing this year. Something about camping in a harsh environment really brings you closer with your friends, and the whole community there is so welcoming and energizing. Music has been bringing communities together for 1000s of years, and festivals like that really show how true that is.

Re: Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?

#62

Post by malux85 »

Universities : Engage with professors and ask if they want any free coding done, you'll make friends

Python user groups: I've been to two of them and speak every few weeks (for free) and have made a group of friends there.

Shared interets: I am interested in computational chemistry, so I got on a bunch of science discord channels and started chatting and helping others (again for free), now I have friends in every country, I just got back from the US and I met several over there (they paid for my flights etc)

Find some shared interests and engage with people

Re: Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?

#63

Post by joenot443 »

Zetice wrote: post #34
geocrasher wrote: post #25

You asked, so I'll tell you: My local Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses. https://jw.org . I've never been happier in my life, and the sense of purpose, community, and security has never been higher. I won't espouse any religious teachings here, that's what the link above is for should you choose to visit it. The most amazing part is that it's genuine and trustworthy. It's all made of imperfect humans to be sure, bu…

Eh, it's genuine as long as you subscribe to their set of beliefs. This may not be a problem for you, but for folks who care about reality, it could be more difficult. The difference between this and say, a rec soccer team, is that it's an all-or-nothing endeavor. You can't "casually" become a Jehovah's Witness (or any other religion), you have to decide that your entire life is aligned to those principles. I'm not k…

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?

#64

Post by lynx23 »

Reading the comments, I notice a lot of posters seek out tech communities. While I get why a nerd would want to do that, I have a different tendency. Most of my outside-of-work activities are actually not tech related. Sure, I have a bunch of private projects to work on, but I usually do that in single player mode. I picked up a number of "also working in tech" friends over time, and going out with them is still fun and interesting. I also enjoyed the social time at various conferences, meeting likeminded people. But I don't want to spend my after-work-time and weekends with tech folks by default. That is, simply put, too much of one thing. Stepping out of tech is what keeps the dayjob interesting.

Re: Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?

#65

Post by bscphil »

geocrasher wrote: post #25

You asked, so I'll tell you: My local Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses. https://jw.org . I've never been happier in my life, and the sense of purpose, community, and security has never been higher. I won't espouse any religious teachings here, that's what the link above is for should you choose to visit it. The most amazing part is that it's genuine and trustworthy. It's all made of imperfect humans to be sure, bu…

Sincere question: when did you join JW, and what was your immediate reason for doing so?

The reason I ask is that there are a lot of people recommending churches (of various kinds) in this thread, and I take it most of the non-religious among us would very much not be comfortable regularly attending a religious organization's meetings purely for community, while not believing any the things that organization believes. (With the exception of religious organizations that are explicitly accepting of people with any faith, such as Unitarian Universalists.)

To me, it's sort of implicit in the question that what we are looking for is something you can show up to and get involved purely because you want somewhere to show up and get involved, without people side-eyeing you because of that or expecting something more than that (like a declaration of faith) in the months or years to come.

Re: Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?

#66

Post by _piif »

NickC25 wrote: post #53

I live in a very transient city with very little tech industry, which also happens to be a city where half the population leaves every April/May through October/November. Community has been hard, especially meeting new folks. There have been a few community tech events that have come and gone, and I've been lucky enough to meet a few friends through that. I joined a gym 4 years ago, and a lot of my friends now I've m…

> I joined a gym 4 years ago, and a lot of my friends now I've met through that gym.

Is it common for strangers to actually approach each other in the gym? At least here everyone goes from machine to machine listening to music and making as little contact as possible and the few times I've been approached was just to ask how many sets I have left. I've been surprised just how much that seems to differ from place to place.

Re: Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?

#67

Post by Zetice »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #49
Zetice wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, it's genuine as long as you subscribe to their set of beliefs. This may not be a problem for you, but for folks who care about reality, it could be more difficult. The difference between this and say, a rec soccer team, is that it's an all-or-nothing endeavor. You can't "casually" become a Jehovah's Witness (or any other religion), you have to decide that your entire life is aligned to those principles. I'm not k…

There are quite a lot of varying degrees of casual believers in religion. I grew up in a family of Christians/Catholics who never go to church, rarely say grace, have never personally read the Bible, but still believe in God/afterlife/etc and have personal beliefs that are molded from religious teachings. I know at least for the Christian based religious groups I'm aware of, you don't even need to share faith to be p…

For Jehovah's Witnesses specifically, this could not be further from the truth [0], and for Christian groups generally, you beg the question here by ceding one must believe in that religion's concept of a deity/afterlife/etc. Such a belief is extremely hard to come by if not raised in that religion, and even harder if you're attached to reality's cause-effect relationships. Not impossible! But hard.

And you're right; warring religious groups don't use fists...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah%27s_Witnesses_congrega...

Re: Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?

#68

Post by kortex »

antoinealb wrote: post #35
mydriasis wrote: post #28

I joined the Freemasons. It's been awesome, I've met a great group of guys and we talk smack and eat soup. Good stuff.

How does it work ? I always kind of assumed you had to be invited to join, that it was not something you can just go to and register ?

As far as I understand as a non-member, but as someone who has talked to one, they are really hurting for new members. I'm pretty sure if you just find a local lodge and email them they'd be happy to give an invite.

Re: Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?

#70

Post by porcoda »

Sports (both playing in amateur leagues and attending local teams), seeing live music, and participating in local arts collectives. I tried computer related communities (hacker spaces, meetups, etc), but it always felt like it was just work in disguise or people trying to turn fun into resume fodder or networking for professional purposes. So I just try to find people with mutual interests that are orthogonal to my day job.
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