The Science of Making Friends

I met half a dozen very good IRL friends first through online discussion (though not on HN).

I think the Carnegie book isn’t that great, because it’s easy to misinterpret the rules. An often mentioned strategy is to be a good listener. This gets repeated ad nauseam, but is it actually true? I found that people become more open if you put a story on the table first. It’s like an investment. You open yourself a little bit and tell something about yourself, whereas a question about the other person asks them to trust you first.

someone once said something along: any relationship will thrive to a degree to which value is derived by both sides

This helped me understand a few things. We all have childhood friends that once made sense but now if we met these people we wouldn't become friends. That's the exception to above rule, and i'm sure there are a few others, but generally that is a good way to understand why a friendship is working or ceases to be useful. It's something you can also use to acquire new friends or improve existing relationships. The value you offer may be as simple as being available (i.e. available to go out to meet possible romantic interests, available to pursue a new hobby together, available to blow off steam after work), actually listening and offering advice (advice part only works if the person looks up to you on a given subject and asks for it, unsolicited advice is the worst), being positive and seeking/seeing positivity in every situation/person (i've had friends that really helped me realize that people are in different stages of their life even when they seem obnoxious there's probably a good reason for it at the time so we shouldn't be quick to criticize and it's mostly a waste of time anyway). Most people don't actually think about this or put any effort into improving their value proposition but you'd be surprised how much difference that can make.

The thing is... I have to find something interesting about folks and the activities going on to even be motivated to keep up interaction. I need something to be curious about. I can learn a lot about life by reading and random conversations with random folks. This is one of the greatest things about being an immigrant in language courses, and one of the reasons I'll do another solo trip to Amsterdam - people open up in coffee shops (though I understand that is partially because I'm female).

That all said, poplular culture often remains strange and unusual to me, along with the things people do with their time and the things people seem to like to talk about. I once googled who the Kardashians were because it came up in small talk and folks wouldn't believe that I quit watching television (outside of the random show). I watch conspiracy theories for fun while working on artwork, which is also incredibly boring for a great deal of folks to talk about. I don't have the formal education to keep up with some topics - for example, I read HN mostly because I think it is important to know some stuff about these sorts of topics and because I have great hope in technology, but not because I'm personally involved (and I learn quite a bit, thank you every random one of you).

I really wish it were as simple as you say, but forming anything long-lasting with some of this stuff has proven to be a futile thing. I'll take the random friends I wind up getting and be happy with that.

WRT the decline with age, I've always felt like a lot of it is 'ego based', for lack of better terms.

I've found that as time goes on, people are far more concerned with doing things by the book, projecting an image, etc. rather than just 'being', enjoying life in the moment, doing things just because.

I've certainly been guilty of this to some extent because it seems impossible to avoid.

Personal anecdote: At age 16 it was fun to hang around at a bus stop or street corner or whatever and just chat bollocks. Move forward a bit and in college we'd hang out in someone's dorm room or flat or equivalent.

Now everyone is off at work, spaced out all over the place. You might be able to get one or two people to do something, but it'll probably mean some sort of sanitized commercial experience (go and get pizza at a restaurant, pay to commute there, pay to commute back, etc).

And it's all because we've sort of decided that working all the time is more important than being social.

I think that's sad. I often wonder if it's how we end up with such warped political environments. No-one just relaxes, any more, it's all 40 hour weeks and 'scheduling appointments' months into the future.

You grow up, and what were 20 kids, become a banker, a lawyer, a janitor, a policeman, a nurse, a dropout, a homeless guy, and so on. And it just doesn't work, because of all these rules we've made up, status games, location, whatever. Why can't we just go to the park again?

And no, this isn't just about childhood friends moving away. It's the same story up and down the scale, in my experience. Everyone is busy, everyone is pushing.

The community takes a back seat to economic needs, it seems. Something like that. I'm not sure. I know we still got stuff done back then, I have a bit of paper with a hologram on it that proves it. But it wasn't all consuming, somehow.