I'm more recently a believer that the best way to make friends as a guy is to be in an environment where you make loose connections but have long-term repeated interactions. In short, join a club. Work is mildly effective at this but because of other factors not as good as a club. Work-related meetup groups aren't as awesome for it either - it should be more like a side interest so it feels more like play. It doesn't even have to be a club that aligns with your true core passions, just something you enjoy enough and have a good chance of running into the same people semi-frequently. After a few months you've increased your odds of finding a new friend massively.
The Science of Making Friends
91–100 of 235 posts
Re: The Science of Making Friends
#92WRT 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…
FWIW, my life isn't like this at all. I'm 34 and my friends and I are all professionals.
It was gorgeous in Seattle this week. Monday night I went to a BBQ with 7 of my closest friends. We spent hours on the rooftop deck of their apt building relaxing and shooting the shit. The rest of the deck was shockingly empty for such a nice day.
Tuesday night I went to a different BBQ hosted by other super close friends in their backyard. We spent hours relaxing and eating and having fun with their 4 year old.
Wed I messaged a friend I didn't know that well and we got drinks after work. 3/3 beautiful evenings spent outside with friends! I was happy about this.
I don't mean to judge or brag, just share my experience. I'm finding meaningful connection into my 30s, which I'm thankful for because it's really important to me.
Re: The Science of Making Friends
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought this was a cool idea, and so I just signed up, but I was so alarmed by the process that I made an HN account to address this here. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but you drop people into randomly assigned groups of people who live within a certain distance without giving the user a chance to screen that group for people they already may know and need to avoid? This is such an obvious potential problem that…
Thank you for very much for your feedback. I really appreciate it. Yes, Krewe does drop you into a group as soon as you sign up and you don't get to see who's in it. Keep in mind that we never give ANYONE your location or email address. You also have the choice to leave the group right away and join a new group and you have the ability to vote people out of a group. But I strongly believe the platform simply won't wo…
"Picking and choosing" is not remotely the same thing as "screening," and that you conflate the two indicates that you either didn't read my comment in good faith or you missed the point by an almost insurmountable margin.
I'd urge you to listen to the needs of your users. You managed to dismiss this out of hand in a way that implies you haven't thought much about women at all. Obviously you don't have to, and you wouldn't be alone there. But this is quite literally a case of a woman giving you feedback about something that many (if not most, by another large margin) women consider vitally important. (The response amongst my group of friends have so far ranged from "unbelievable" to "Jesus Christ.") Do what you want with that information, but don't dismiss it as "wrong" or irrelevant because you believe it applies to all areas of life. You don't have to care about female users, but know that it's obviously a choice.
ETA: in response to the comments below:
1. No one suggested that risk should be completely eliminated, or indeed that this was possible. You're responding to a straw man argument. Which...also doesn't seem in good faith.
2. If you don't understand that someone may screen a group for potential danger without applying further filters ("picking and choosing"), I'm...not sure what else to say except that you obviously have never found yourself in such a position. It seems trivially obvious to me that a user who has already self selected as someone who is looking for a service to match them up with new people would be perfectly capable of deciding to continue in a group after they'd screened it for potential dangers, since that's what they signed up for. People are capable of moderation. In this case, I don't want to be in a group with someone I've seen in a violent situation, and I would rather they hadn't gotten that automatic notification email, either.
This is really very basic stuff.
Re: The Science of Making Friends
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have found that "giving" with the expectation of getting something in return is just wrong headed. Give because you want to give. Of course you have to be careful of the takers. Friend of mine for many years was moving, he called me and asked me to help. I said "Roy, you are worth 10 million bucks, go pay someone to help you!" and he did. There are endless supplies of good people in the world. But it takes effort,…
When I was really young I lived in a small town and things were tight financially for most people. I guess helping each other when someone needed something was a not some virtuous thing but rather a form of currency. Hey, can you help wire the electric to the shack in the back yard. Sure, can your daughter watch my boys tonight. And, it continues like this. I disagree. I think there is a reasonable expectation that s…
So there is something called The Ben Franklin effect, [0] which basically says that people are more likely to befriend/like you if you ask them to do you a big favor rather than the other way around.
The psychological explanation is that people will smooth the cognitive dissonance between their indifference and/or antipathy to you and the fact that they have actually done a favor for you by revising their opinion of you.
Of course asking a favor from someone who is indifferent or slightly hostile toward you may only confirm their misgivings, and I've never tried such a strategy myself, but I have read that such favor-seeking often works.
In the Wikipedis link, Franklin is quoted from his autobiography as follows:
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"Having heard that [a rival legislator] had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I return'd it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death.
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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect
EDIT: added prepositional phrase
Re: The Science of Making Friends
#95For all the negative things folks have been saying on here about SF (expensive, etc.) there's a huge positive that overshadows all of it for me: I've made more new friends in the last 3 years since I moved to SF than, I'd honestly say, my previous decade living in NYC. I'm 37 now and feel like I have more of a community than in college. I think the key to finding real friends and friendships is to be in a place where…
Slightly different point, but I took the less beaten road of moving to the Valley instead of SF, and made a lot of friends here compared to everywhere else I've been (grew up just north of NYC, have lived in Illinois and the DMV). There are a lot of good hard-working people here in the Bay Area who aren't necessarily obsessed with tech on their off-hours, or even working in tech (two good friends are a teacher and a Stanford post-doc for example).
Re: The Science of Making Friends
#96I think the most important thing is to have a long-lasting, monogamous relationship. At that point you can decide on expanding your social circle if you feel like it.
Re: The Science of Making Friends
#97WRT 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…
FWIW, my life isn't like this at all. I'm 34 and my friends and I are all professionals. It was gorgeous in Seattle this week. Monday night I went to a BBQ with 7 of my closest friends. We spent hours on the rooftop deck of their apt building relaxing and shooting the shit. The rest of the deck was shockingly empty for such a nice day. Tuesday night I went to a different BBQ hosted by other super close friends in the…
>> I don't mean to judge or brag
It's not necessary to qualify comments like this. :)
Sounds like we all need to move to Seattle. Maybe not too many of us though. :P
I find myself thinking that there's an economic side to all of this. It might just be that my small hometown was less competitive. London feels like it has some sort of illness by comparison. A place to work, not a place to live.
Re: The Science of Making Friends
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think/hope my start up, Krewe ( https://www.gokrewe.com ), has found the right formula. I believe the key elements are access and comfort. Krewe places people into a group with five of their peers, making it comfortable to hang out at first. You don't have to single anyone out, it works kind of how things worked in your youth. And everyone lives within a half mile radius, so it's really convenient to meet up often.…
Good idea. I signed up for fun. No one else in my group yet though. Too bad the network effect is so hard to overcome.
I agree
Re: The Science of Making Friends
#99For all the negative things folks have been saying on here about SF (expensive, etc.) there's a huge positive that overshadows all of it for me: I've made more new friends in the last 3 years since I moved to SF than, I'd honestly say, my previous decade living in NYC. I'm 37 now and feel like I have more of a community than in college. I think the key to finding real friends and friendships is to be in a place where…
Another thing that contributes to this is the massive influx of people moving to SF. There's so many people looking for friends that they're easy to find. I think this would be tougher in other cities without the same influx.
Re: The Science of Making Friends
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW, my life isn't like this at all. I'm 34 and my friends and I are all professionals. It was gorgeous in Seattle this week. Monday night I went to a BBQ with 7 of my closest friends. We spent hours on the rooftop deck of their apt building relaxing and shooting the shit. The rest of the deck was shockingly empty for such a nice day. Tuesday night I went to a different BBQ hosted by other super close friends in the…
>> I don't mean to judge or brag It's not necessary to qualify comments like this. :) Sounds like we all need to move to Seattle. Maybe not too many of us though. :P I find myself thinking that there's an economic side to all of this. It might just be that my small hometown was less competitive. London feels like it has some sort of illness by comparison. A place to work, not a place to live.
Interesting! I have met some amazingly awesome people in London who I would totally hang out with if I lived there. But they are musicians, not doctors/lawyers/engineers. When I think about it more, most of my good friends come from my musical circles, not my engineering/technical ones. If I didn't have those musical circles, I wonder if I would be nearly as social.
> It's not necessary to qualify comments like this. :)
Thanks for being gracious. :) It bent somebody out of shape though -- the comment got downvoted. Doesn't bother me, but I can see how it could rub someone the wrong way.